Reflections from my UX design internship
Memoir of a Red Hat intern
4 universal lessons I’ve learned from my first foray into the corporate world and UX design
Oftentimes I find myself reminiscing with my friend about the paths we’ve taken to get where we are. I’ve known him since elementary school, and we’ve seen each other grow up and become the young adults that we are today. It’s a bizarre feeling having a constant reminder of how far I’ve come, and even more so when we both got an internship at the same time. I recall about half a year ago when neither of us had received an offer yet, we were shooting out shotgun blasts of cover letters and applications to the eternal void of the job market. It’s a grueling process, and one that makes you feel a bit inadequate. But rejection was a necessary experience leading up to success.
My friend got his internship first, and around that time I had my first interview and was promptly rejected. I applied to Red Hat shortly after. Receiving the acceptance letter felt like an impossibility at that time. Even then I knew that compared to a lot of other people’s experiences, I had it rather easy. I would like to think that I would have kept going even with constant rejection, but I truly don’t know.
When I joined Red Hat, I was constantly anxious. It was only after becoming relatively comfortable with the position did I realize something crucial to my success.
It was never personal
That was the first lesson that I learned upon entering Red Hat was that a majority of rejections were never due to inadequacy or some personal vendetta, but rather it was just the nature of the job market. Plenty of students apply to different internships with credentials that would certainly allow them to fulfill the job, but get rejected due to factors outside of their control.
It may be that another candidate outshone them in some areas, the position could have closed, or it could have simply been that their personality didn’t mesh well with the company’s work culture or interviewer. Truthfully, the candidate never knows what’s going on behind the scenes. That silence can lead to feelings of frustration, but with the knowledge that I have now, I’ll be able to move forward in future endeavors with less anxiety.
That frustration is something that I shared with my friend often. I think we both understood that it wasn’t guaranteed that we would end up where we wanted to end up. At least from now on I have added a mantra to my mindset that I carry with me from now on:
I am enough.
And subsequently:
You are also enough.
Rejections don’t make you worthless or unable to perform; you will succeed as long as you keep trying; and if you earned a job/internship/role, you deserved it. This leads into the next lesson I learned whilst working at Red Hat.
Have the confidence to perform
The first few weeks of the internship were rough for me. Not necessarily because of anything that Red Hat threw at me, in fact, I was receiving constant reassurance from my manager and mentors, but because I felt a large desire to prove myself. The first few weeks were meant to get me acclimated and set up the resources I needed to succeed, but I wasn’t thinking about that at all. I felt like I needed to learn everything immediately. I wanted to gain all the knowledge about UX design so that my suggestions and work would carry some weight or importance. This in theory isn’t a bad mindset to have, but what was toxic about it was that I felt like I didn’t yet have anything of value to offer to Red Hat.
Something I had to realize, and I realized this quickly, was that my input and fresh perspective was something that Red Hat wanted from me. It was valued, and it was something that was desired by everyone I worked with. I never felt as though my suggestions were demeaned due to being an intern, and I was in fact praised for having the confidence to speak up on what I felt was the right way forward.
This was when I realized the second lesson that Red Hat taught me. It didn’t matter if I made mistakes or spoke up about a suggestion that people didn’t agree with, it mattered that I had the courage to try. After all, a person who says they can and a person who says they can’t are oftentimes both correct.
There was a method of learning that my mentor spoke about with me called “learning by doing”. Even if for a while your suggestions are not put into practice, they will still be valued. Eventually, your understanding of the work that goes into the company’s processes will grow. As long as you have the confidence to improve, you will improve. That being said, there’s a large factor in the process of improvement that became a massive learning curve for me whilst working at Red Hat. That learning curve was the third lesson I learned during my internship.
Feedback is for your benefit
Taking feedback from others was actually something I thought I had down before entering Red Hat. I was a musician before, and a writer in my academic and free time. When it came to the improvement of my craft, I was ready to receive feedback and apply it. When it came to hearing suggestions for my work it felt a bit different.
I still don’t know why exactly feedback felt a lot more personal to me in this context. Perhaps it was my want to prove myself that sat in the back of my mind, or the knowledge that in a full-time position the quality of my work would determine whether or not I kept my job. Either way, I found that some feedback would get to me in ways that it truly shouldn’t have.
Feedback exists so that you as a professional, or in my case a content designer, can become stronger in your field. As you garner feedback and experience, you can carry that knowledge with you permanently. Even knowing that, it was hard to feel like I was doing anything right for a time. The ironic thing is that as long as I was heeding that feedback, I was doing the right thing.
Eventually, through conversation and reflection with my mentor, I was able to find the positives in my work and eventually become a bit more confident in myself as a content designer. It’s all a process, but I can truly say that I can now take full advantage of any feedback that comes my way.
So far in this article I have spoken at length about lessons that could be applied to any role in a company. I have spoken about a lot of these topics with my friend. He felt similarly to me in a majority of these situations, and it helped center myself as I navigated through my own emotions. I hope that they can do the same for you. That being said, I do want to go into the fourth and final lesson I learned whilst interning at Red Hat, which is focused on UX design.
Good UX is about designing for the user, not yourself
This particular part of learning how to become a UX designer was the one that stuck out to me the most. It’s really hard to think outside of yourself, and when you need to design for everyone it can be an impossibility. Personally, I have been using computers since I was 10 years old, so a decade of experience has allowed me to navigate most websites no matter what kind of UX they provide. Things that may seem obvious to me might be incomprehensible to a layman, so it was a gigantic hurdle to be able to put my mind into that kind of state.
I found that to create good UX for all walks of life I would have to reference design choices from other websites and Red Hat products. The UXD hub endeavor that Red Hat has been spearheading, which is a collection of UX examples from across all of Red Hat’s products, would be a great boon for this struggle in particular. In addition to this, I would cross reference a number of products for a lot of my designs.
It would also help when I was able to understand the user in certain situations. For example, when I was designing for a developer, I could use more technical language than when I was designing for the average consumer. This allowed me to lean into the legacy knowledge that I had with me. I also found myself cross referencing with a lot of my co-workers and receiving feedback from a large number of people so that I could make microcopy and designs understandable for us all. This required a bit of confidence to be able to pitch my ideas as well, but by the end of my time here I can say for certain that I have a way better mindset for UX design.
Funnily enough, I realize that making good design decisions comes down to being able to apply all the lessons I learned whilst working as a UX designer. It’s a remarkable thing that I can do now, and being able to reflect on how far I’ve come fills me with joy. Even if these months have flown by, I can say for certain that I have gained lifelong skills that will continue to be refined as I navigate the wide world ahead of me.
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