5 Key Learnings as a UI/UX Design Intern at Innovaccer
It was the month of November and companies started lining up at my college to hire summer interns. Mostly the openings were to hire SDE people. All my friends who were into coding were able to feel the pressure as a new placement drive was scheduled for every other day meanwhile, I was working on a self project and was brushing up my UX skills.
How I got into Innovaccer
One afternoon I got to know that Innovaccer is hiring for design interns. Innovaccer is the fastest growing healthcare IT company, driving healthcare efficiency by unleashing the power of data. I’ve heard a lot about Innovaccer from my seniors. The assignment was to design the user experience for channels on Netflix. I was very excited to work on the assignment as the problem statement was pretty attractive & would do great for my portfolio as well. The major steps that I’ve followed were:
- Studied the Problem Statement
- Done User Research
- Interviewed some active users (My Friends :P )
- Created User Personas
- Lo-Fi Wireframes
- Hi-Fi Wireframes
- Organized Feedback Sessions (Again, with my friends :P )
- Iterated
By following the above steps, I was finally able to submit the assignment: Netflix Channels
Later on, I got to know that I got shortlisted for the next round which was a Zoom call interview with Anagh. We all have read about the interviews and I did the same. I was nervous and excited at the same time as it was my 1st design interview and I had no idea how will it go. The interview started and surprisingly after 5 mins, the interview turned into a meaningful conversation. I just listened to what he asked and had faith in my answers. After some time I got a call from the HR and boom, I was hired as a design intern at Innovaccer. My excitement was at its peak. I was all set to make the most out of this great opportunity.
A new beginning
Nervous jitters every now and then, high on energy and excitement, setting up my workspace and checking the onboarding schedule a hundred times -this pretty much portrays the morning of my first day. After 3 days of onboarding sessions, I finally got to meet the people that I was going to work with, the Design team. These guys were so humble, supportive and didn’t ask for a rough tough intro, unlike the college seniors :P
Working remotely there is a possibility that you might feel a little disconnected to the team, but meetings like Design Desks & UX Friyays made sure that I find myself sitting in the office space with all the colleagues discussing some random things over a cup of coffee :)
In the meeting Design System Intro, I was amazed to see how nicely these people have documented their design beliefs, all the symbols starting from the atomic level to the higher levels, the design process that they follow, the tools that they use, etc. I was damn excited when I got to know that I am going to collaborate with Anagh to contribute to the design system.
Highlights of My Contribution
I have worked with the design system team. Here are some of the areas that I’ve worked upon:
- Audits for Navigation, Modals, Breadcrumbs, forms, Inline editable fields, Sliders, and Date & Time Pickers.
2. Added Smart Layout across all the buttons in the Design Library
3. First Proposal- Forms:
- Involved audit for forms
- Identify the emerging patterns
- Take inspiration
- Define behaviors
- Start Designing
- Complete the documentation
- Get it reviewed
4. Created Default Symbols:
- Identified the most used variants of all the symbols at the atomic level
- Added Defaults for the such variants
5. Second Proposal- Inline Editable Fields
6. Third Proposal- Sliders
Key Learnings
I enjoyed working on the Design System, as it enhanced my fundamental knowledge & gave me a strong understanding of the basics of design. Below are some of the tips and learnings- some shared, some discovered :P
1. Patience is the key
Be patient. Good things take time.
The first thing that I got my hands-on was the audit process. The process involves identifying all the use cases of a particular component across all the projects by going through each and every screen. There were hundreds of screens and because of my slow internet, I just have to sit there waiting for a single screen to load and then extract what I want out of it and then repeating the same process again and again. But that time taught me how to be patient, patient enough to wait for the big things to happen, and do your job honestly.
2. Ask questions
It is not the ability to answer that is going to take you forward, its the courage to ask questions.
I’ve always had this thought in my mind what if I end up asking a stupid question. So I never bothered to ask one. Being a part of a well-organized design team, you are always surrounded by some amazing designers, all of them with their unique talents, fortes, and perspectives of designs. All you have to do is show the courage to ask questions and the curiosity to learn. Everyone’s willing to help but you’ll have to ask for it.
3. Master the art of storytelling
The design presented well is the design that gets appreciated.
Throughout the internship period, I got a chance to write 2 proposals. Proposals are basically a storyline that you have prepared for a particular component, its structure, behavior, use cases, everything. Working on proposals I’ve realized if you wanna be a good designer you should be a good storyteller as well. You should know the best way to present your designs so that they have a high probability to get converted.
4. Long Term Vision while Designing
It’s important to keep the near term and the long term vision in mind while designing.
Always keep in mind that you are designing for the future. Your solutions are not supposed to meet only yesterday’s or today’s necessities but should also be able to tackle tomorrow’s concerns. The best way to achieve that is to think of each and every possible use case before hitting the blank canvas. This is probably the biggest learning for me, as this truly justifies the need and the purpose of having a Design system.
5. Learn How to Collaborate & Empathize
Try to speak the language of the other person.
Apart from the design team, I got to collaborate with the Developers as well. I explained my thoughts regarding a particular concept followed by the designs and what we were expecting them to do. But somewhere I felt that there was a small communication gap in between, this taught me that you should be able to explain your views according to the other person. Being a designer you should be able to empathize not just with the users but also with the people whom you are working with.
They say time flies when you are having fun, now I can truly feel the words. This is the last week of my 12 weeks long internship. I am pretty sure this journey would have been added with quite a lot more fun if we were not compelled to do this internship remotely from our homes because of the pandemic. Apart from all this I thoroughly enjoyed my time here at Innovaccer.
Thanks for reading :)
