Embracing Growth: My Journey of Personal and Professional Development at IBM
“Education is the foundation of our progress” ~ Thomas J. Watson, Sr.
I stood in front of the entrance of the IBM’s Silicon Valley Lab, feeling a mix of anticipation and nostalgia as I awaited my manager’s arrival for the first day of my second internship at IBM. I was eager to reconnect with my manager and learn more about research and design.
This time around, I had taken on a new position — I was going to be a service design intern. While I found a sense of familiarity being on the same team as last year, I knew there was so much more I could achieve. This year, I believed I could play a more significant role in the success of our projects.
I had set several actionable goals for myself. I aimed to enhance my research skills by exploring new synthesis techniques, enabling me to analyze data more effectively. I wanted to improve my interviewing skills to better capture users’ needs and perspectives. I wanted to gain expertise in executing user testing, providing valuable insights into the usability and effectiveness of our designs. I achieved my desired goals and more through three pillars of thought.
Three Pillars
Three pillars of how I succeeded in my internship: adopt a learner’s mindset, be willing to adapt, and showcase your work and progress along the way.
Adopt a learner’s mindset:
Acknowledge there is much to be learned and ask all the questions!
As someone who started their internship as a college freshmen, I acknowledged that my understanding of UX design was still developing. I asked lots of questions to colleagues and subject matter experts, and sought out mentors to help guide me. The community culture at IBM was so supportive and everyone was willing to help me. I’m constantly seeking to discover my passions and I’ve found talking to various IBMers seeing their passion and getting a sense of their day-to-day job and role within their work, has aided me in discovering what I want, potentially, as my first job.
Willingness to adapt:
Take advantage of the resources that your provided with.
The opportunity to witness changes in broader company initiatives was fascinating and I developed tenacity for adapting to changes and to meet my clients’ needs. I was able to adapt and reorient myself to changing expectations by harnessing the knowledge resources available to me. One of the greatest things about IBM is the resources from over 288,000 employees, IBM created courses, Udemy courses, O’Reilly media, Medium articles, and IBM internal mentorship platform. I’ve found plenty of avenues to continuously learn and cultivate my technical and soft skills. Moreover, internal tools like Slack allow me to connect with the communities of IBM, including the other interns. Through these tools, I’m able to engage with various activities within IBM to expand my circle of knowledge.
Showcase your work and progress:
“Show your work, it’s just as important as the answer” — your math teacher, probably.
Reflect and showcase your progress.
To foster successful collaboration and build empathy, it is vital that everyone is on the same page. Not everyone knows the same things as you, so it is important to gather your team, expose your knowledge, understand and specify the objectives to pursue, and revisit your artifacts often to update as needed. Asking for feedback throughout the project ensures that the project meets key objectives and goals. The entire team benefits from reflecting on all the artifacts generated as a result of activities, research, and reflections. I often revisit these to remind myself of the skills I’ve gained, the lessons I’ve learned, and to extract knowledge for future projects.
Reflection
These three pillars carried me through my internship by enabling me to grow, gain new skills and reshape and expand current skills. Moreover, I harnessed my connections with the IBM community during my time. By engaging with colleagues, subject matter experts, and resources, I gained a deeper understanding into the qualitative and quantitative research methodologies utilized by IBM. The collective knowledge within my network undoubtedly shaped my growth as a service design professional.
By the end of my internship, I had met so many IBMers covering various disciplines from quantum computing, data science, design, and more. In doing so, I found an intersection between my interest in statistical analysis and user research. I was also able to execute an entire project roadmap, using the full Loop of enterprise design thinking, and in the process grew my design abilities. I had achieved all that I set forth to do and walked away with another fruitful internship experience.
I’m extraordinarily thankful for my experience at IBM and can’t wait to bring my expertise into my next experience.
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Hermione Bossolina was a service designer at IBM during the summer of 2023. She’s currently a junior at Cornell University. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
