UX Bootcamp Grads: How to Prepare for a Slalom Build Internship
Four months after completing a twelve week UX design bootcamp at General Assembly, I landed a spot at Slalom Build as an Experience Design intern. It was the kind of program you dream about, with a complex design prompt, the potential to make a lasting impact, a team of talented interns ready to collaborate, and a group of supportive mentors.
My intern team was tasked with creating a portal for Slalom job applicants to track their interview progress and enter their availability for interviews. The goal? To create a more transparent recruiting process for the candidates, while also reducing the workload on the recruiting team. It wasn’t a dip-your-toes-in project.
Bootcamp grads and future UX design interns, I’m going to share the ways I felt prepared for my Slalom Build internship, and more importantly, the ways I didn’t, so that you can be better prepared.
The ways I felt prepared:
Design thinking
I learned in my bootcamp that designers solve problems by brainstorming and incrementally improving their designs. We practiced this way of thinking by using a technique called “Design Studio,” an iterative group brainstorming activity that uses unusual prompts, like “sketch the most expensive way of solving the problem,” or “sketch the most futuristic solution.” Then after presenting our ideas to the group, we refined the sketches until we were left with a feasible idea that could actually solve the problem.
This technique taught me that the best solutions are not always the most obvious. Sometimes they sound a little crazy at first, but after some iteration, they become just the thing. From the very beginning of the internship, I knew not to get too attached to one idea because there could always be a better solution around the corner. Who knew when there’d be a lightbulb moment that would make me rethink everything? (This happened often.)
Keep your mind open to new ideas, even if they sound a little crazy at first!
Story telling
My General Assembly instructors were right, UX designers are always presenting their work and speaking in front of groups, so it’s a good thing we spent so much of the course practicing our story-telling skills.
We started off easy, just speaking in front of the class each morning. But by the end of the program, we had progressed to high stress project presentations. I learned quickly that the most successful design presentations were told like a story, with characters, a conflict and resolution. When it came time to present my designs to stakeholders during the internship, I remembered to incorporate those elements of story-telling — demonstrating my work through the perspective of the user, addressing their pain points and showing how my solution would improve the user’s experience. Sometimes it’s easy to forget when you’re chugging along on a project that you’re building a product for real people. Telling the story from the user’s perspective reminds the audience to be empathetic.
The more I practiced telling stories in front of groups and in meetings, the easier it got, and the more I realized the true potential of good story-telling.
Practice telling a story. It helps your audience empathize with the user.
Asking questions
One of the first things I learned during my UX bootcamp was how to ask a user interview question. We learned to avoid leading and close-ended questions, we learned to go off script and ask follow-up questions, and we learned to actively listen. We did it over and over until we understood the motivations and pain points of our users. The skill of asking questions paid off in a multitude of ways during the internship– it helped me understand the needs of the users and stakeholders and the product I was designing.
During the internship I asked questions about everything. I asked stakeholders what their goals and constraints were. I asked developers whether certain features I wanted to implement could be built, and asked my solution owners whether these features were in scope. I asked my teammates and users what I was missing, because when you work on a project so closely, you stop seeing your mistakes. And I asked my design leaders whether I was on the right track.
In my past career, I avoided asking questions because I was afraid of being a bother. But now, this is one of the most important aspects of my job. I know that asking questions will ensure a better product for the user– one that can be built, and built on time.
Ask every question you need answered.
The ways I felt unprepared:
Working with engineers
My bootcamp was made up entirely of designers. All my classmates were designers and so were my instructors. We never had technical constraints because our designs were never going to get built. So it was an adjustment when I started my internship as the only designer on a team of eleven engineers and three solution owners.
I had to start worrying whether my design was buildable. I had a less than perfect idea of which features would be easy to build and which features would be hard. I didn’t know how long things would take to complete, and I didn’t understand development terminology. But as the internship progressed, I learned that the more I shared my ideas with engineers in the early stages of brainstorming, the more feasible my designs became. Developers could tell me if an idea was buildable within the time frame, or if it exceeded the constraints of the project.
Being the only designer on a large team of engineers bolstered my confidence. I was the one having to step up to the plate and defend my design because there was no one else to hide behind. I had to answer all of the hard questions and get comfortable saying, “I don’t know the answer,” or “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
I felt so proud the first moment I saw the design become reality, because I knew how much of a team effort it really was.
Practice working with technical constraints, and remember that devs are your friends. Include them as much as you can in the design process.
Working in Agile
At first I was shocked at the number of meetings I had to attend, many of them Agile ceremonies. I didn’t know how to prepare for them and I didn’t know how much to contribute. Because my tasks weren’t documented the same way on Jira as the rest of my engineering teammates, I often felt disconnected from everyone else’s work.
But I embraced the structure of Agile after our first sprint retrospective, a meeting dedicated to looking back on the last two weeks of work and discussing what went well and what didn’t. We always left as a more effective team–catching problems before they spiraled out of control, keeping us engaged and more empathetic to each other’s needs.
By the end of the internship, I knew when to voice my concerns in sprint planning sessions, carefully reading the user stories written for each ticket to make sure they aligned with the functionality I envisioned, and when to answer questions and concerns about the design.
Agile will help you work more productively with your team. Trust the process.
In summary
My bootcamp at General Assembly taught me to think like a designer–to keep an open mind, to welcome feedback, to iterate. It taught me to get comfortable telling stories from the user’s perspective and to embrace daily public speaking. It taught me to ask questions about everything.
What my bootcamp didn’t teach me was the daily grind–the ins and outs of working on a team made up of engineers who have different priorities, the stress of having meetings every day that you don’t know how to prepare for, and designing a product that is going to be used by a lot of people in the real world. These are the things that I had to learn on the go during my internship.
If you’re a UX design bootcamp grad and you’re lucky enough to join the Slalom Build internship program, you’re going to learn what it feels like to work on a real project that has a real impact. You’re going to learn what it feels like to be supported by your team and your mentors. And you’re going to grow as a designer. Growth hurts but it’s worth it.
Thank you, Slalom Build, for an unforgettable summer!
