Week 1 — Transitioning back
Strange to realize just 10 days ago, I was dusting away my apartment on a little island in the middle of the Atlantic. I chose to study Human Computer Interaction in the Carnegie Mellon and University of Madeira dual degree program to spend a year abroad. Six months later- island fever is real! I’ve missed uber, drying machines, but most importantly, the creative inspiration critical to any designer.
Fast forward, it’s now end of week 1 of my internship at the digital product agency Made by Many (MxM) in NYC- how refreshing it is to be surrounded by the talented team here.
First thoughts:
1. Just do good work — and have some fun while at it.
Coming from the finance world before grad school, it’s nice to see the flexibility of the work culture here. On our first day, we had limited lunch place options because of an incredibly cute in house german spitz. Instead of eating out, we brought Mexican back to the office and ate together over an episode of Silicon Valley.
As good mentors (and employees), the design and engineering teams on-boarded us with workshops going over company details, their design process, technology, business development, and sample projects they’ve recently worked on.
2. Mental health and AI you say?
More clarification please! Hoping we’d get more details on scope, we learned that it was up to us to scope down the brief based on accessibility, need, and our team’s shared interests.
Our first task is to agree on a definition of mental health and artificial intelligence. With all the latest startups tackling different components, we came up with shared definitions for each topic after organizing our initial desk research. To wrap up week 1, we also got to chat with a former designer here at MxM now working at Headspace to get some perspectives on interesting trends in the space of mindfulness and technology.
Our next task will be to decide on the specific audience to build our product for, which will emerge after considering who we’re able to speak to, how much need there is in the market, and how much shared interest there is. Until next week!
