Over the summer, I completed two larger projects and a few smaller design exercises.
The TLDR is that I mainly worked on a new, visionary feature that needed exploration and I learned a lot about working with an abstract project purely fueled by user research insights and the team’s vision. Using 80% of my time, I helped with a vision deck for this feature and made 579 content-based exploration designs, which I exported for the team to use. In the remaining 20% of my time, I worked on a trendscraping deck for a more seasoned product’s feature redesign. For this, I analyzed a total of 56 competitive and comparable apps and websites. I presented my summarized findings in a slide deck to the lead product manager and provided suggestions for how to move forward with the feature redesign.
I, of course, also spent plenty of time exploring the Google buildings, meeting intern and full-time friends, taking advantage of the amenities, and even doing a few random mini projects (one of which I describe below). If you want to read more about what I did, please continue reading. Because nothing I created is public yet though, I will have to outline my tasks generally. :)
I started my summer by helping with the vision deck of a new feature the Google Play team was working on. This was a great way for me to onboard since it guided me to review all the research studies that have been conducted and all the mockups that have been designed, helping me to fully understand the team’s vision for the feature.
I was specifically tasked with creating a beginning “explosion” section of the deck that should be summarized and impactful. I spent time reading through the existing deck versions, documents describing the feature, and UX research decks that explored the problem space. I also surveyed other internal and external project decks to look for example formats for telling a compelling story for a feature. Of the decks I found, I took screenshots of and notes on 11 of them to share with my manager as inspiration.
I then used sketches and sticky notes to ideate different approaches to the “explosion”. After asking my manager for feedback, I created the slides in Google Slides and designed visual assets in Figma. I then presented the higher fidelity slides to my manager and her manager—who was the team’s strategy lead—to get feedback. The three of us went through three iterations of slides.
The deck will undoubtedly continue to evolve, and we agreed that, with the limited time in my internship, I had done more than enough exploration for it and that I should move on to my main project. My manager and the strategy lead expressed that I brought a fresh perspective to identify and communicate the story behind the feature.
I then started my main project—creating a wide UI exploration of designs that could be desirable and helpful for end users of the new feature. This included both Android phone users and app developers who use Google Play. The feature we are proposing would involve a lot of content variety, and I was asked to explore the presentation of, possible types of, and interaction with said content. This exploration is valuable to the team in a few ways. It...
I essentially provided a database of realistic and visually appealing mocks that could be used in prototypes and presentations for selling the idea of the feature. I created 579 total design iterations, of which 93 were finalized and exported for the team to start using. I developed these to work as opaque, transparent light-mode, and transparent dark-mode PNGs, offering flexibility to show off the feature in a variety of contexts.
In addition to the exported designs, I gained a lot of knowledge about creating this sort of content and what restrictions and guidelines would be best to put in place as the team moves forward. In my final presentation to the leadership on the team, I was able to share my suggestions and learnings, as well as additional ideation for management and interaction with this content.
My secondary project involved completing a trendscraping analysis for a specific feature in a more seasoned product. The current feature needs a refresh because it houses a lot of information and users don’t realize some pieces of it are tappable while others aren’t. This is because they are all formatted similarly and look like they should function the same. The goal of this project was to research how to refine this component to flex better and reflect its functionality.
For the trendscraping, I was tasked with analyzing competing and comparable apps to gain inspiration and insight into how other companies organize similar types of information. I created a trendscraping deck with both the competitive and comparative analysis, complete with summarized insights, screenshots with callouts to illustrate my insights, and final recommendations to the team on how to move forward.
My analysis covered 10 competing apps and 46 comparable apps and websites. I took screenshots of each of these apps and added notes into my Figma file about different UI patterns I found interesting. From analyzing my findings as a whole, I was able to provide 15 insights to the team and 4 suggestions for ways to move forward with the redesign. This project will be passed on to another Googler so they can design in a more informed and inspired manner.
This project gave me a chance to work more directly with a PM on a feature that can be implemented into a more seasoned product that is used by millions of people worldwide. I was able to apply my knowledge about design patterns and best UX practices while learning about how seasoned products still innovate and change. Additionally, since I was able to cover so many different apps in my analysis, the PM I worked with expressed that my work would also be a valuable resource for future related projects.
This was a fun 30-minute exercise with a Googler friend of mine who was developing an internal coding plug-in for his team. These plug-ins usually have a logo that is displayed on the webpage describing the plug-in and within the coding tool once it is installed. My friend asked for assistance designing the logo for his plug-in and I agreed.
We met up for 15 minutes of brainstorming for me to ask questions about what his plug-in does and for us to bounce different logo ideas off each other. As we chatted, I would make quick sketches of possible designs and run them by him, making alterations and additional sketches based on his feedback. Once we decided on a few favorites, I brought the designs into Figma and we made smaller changes from there.
We agreed on a design that worked both at a bigger scale for the webpage and a smaller scale to be shown in the coding tool. The design also symbolized how the plug-in works and what value it brings to developers who use it. After launching the feature, nearly 40 people downloaded it within the first week. Though this logo creation task might have a smaller impact compared to my other projects, I valued the fun and collaborative atmosphere at Google that it exemplified.
It’s hard to put all my learnings into a coherent and concise couple of paragraphs, but I’ll try my best to summarize some takeaways from my internship here.
To conclude all this, I also wanted to say how lucky I felt to be able to get mentorship and advice from so many talented people at Google. Sometimes I felt imposter syndrome because I was surrounded by so many smart and accomplished people, but I found that talking openly about this only led to more learning and personal development. I hope any aspiring designers out there know that they have great ideas and comments to bring to the table and that they should speak up to voice those opinions, even if they feel underqualified. I for one will continue to try and share my thoughts and relish that I may not be the “smartest” one in the room because I believe everyone has something to learn from everyone else.
