Welcome back to the User Flows podcast everyone. My name is Thomas Morrell and I'll be your host. and this is a show where we talk about UX design and careers.

I interview designers about their journey into the field and break down how they've been successful in their roles so we all can learn together. Today I'm joined by Shehab Ibrahim. Shehab was an intern at Prudential Financial towards the end of my tenure there.

I was blown away by his passion, curiosity, and ability to talk to anyone at such a young age. I invited him on the show to talk to other students of design about his experiences with internships. Prudential Financial and Intuit. How to find them, lessons learned, and what to expect in your role as a UX intern.

Shehab breaks down his experiences which seemed to vary pretty widely even in closely related organizations. It was a pleasure to speak with him and catch up on what's he's been up to. For any companies out there looking for a junior designer who happens to have some deep real-world experience working for two huge organizations and bringing impact through Design. Shehab is your guy.

You can find him on LinkedIn

or at his Portfolio site.

Listen now

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on RedCircle (All other podcast platforms)

Show Highlights

[6:49] The benefits of learning in a university setting.

[9:21] Internships opening up to Bootcamp graduates.

[10:02] Applying for internships.

[11:10] Preconceived notions were wrong about internships.

[18:10] Getting the first interview.

[20:11] Take a chance and apply.

[21:40] Internship recruiting season.

[24:28] The process of landing an internship.

[26:48] A typical day in the life of a UX intern.

[33:27] Differentiating yourself from other candidates.

[37:25] Lessons learned from two internship experiences.

. . .

If you haven't already, please subscribe to User Flows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. If you prefer video, you can watch it on the UserFlows YouTube channel. Share this episode with friends and family or anyone you know who's interested in UX design. If you'd really like to help me out, you can visit, thomasmorrell.com/survey to let me know what you'd like to learn on the show or you're more or less.

Transcript

NOTE about the transcript. I try my best to provide a transcript of each show. This one in particular came out very poorly. I will try in the future to find a better service to provide these transcripts. The last few have been a tremendous amount of work, if you know of any great services for easy transcribing. Please email me at tm@thomasmorrell.com

 Thomas Morrell  0:00  

Welcome back to the User Flows podcast, everyone, my name is Thomas Morrell. This is the show where we talk about UX design and careers. And I get to interview designers about their journey into the field and break down how they've been successful in their role. So we can all learn together.

Today I am joined by Shehab Ibrahim who was an awesome UX intern for us at Prudential financial. He also went on to intern at Intuit. And I just wanted him to share his experience as a UX intern, how he got those roles, how he participated, what type of work he did, and what he's up to now so other people can learn more about UX internships, and if that might be the right route for them.

So Shehab welcome, really glad you could be here.

Shehab Ibrahim

Thanks for having me on, Tom. So proud. Good to see you again.

Thomas Morrell

Yeah. Good to see you too. Awesome. So if you could just tell everybody a bit about yourself and what you're up to?

Shehab Ibrahim

Yeah, so I'm a product designer from the New York City area. I recently just graduated from college, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, I majored in human computer interaction. Some people might know what that is. But if you're, if you're still new, to the world of UX, human-computer interaction is one of those degrees that really falls in line with the work that we do. In user experience, product design, and research.

It kind of mixes concepts from psychology, design, and computer science. And it helps us create experiences while giving us context, like the business, and also understanding the constraints of the tech we use, but also really keeping all of that like centered with, like, with within, like your users, if that makes sense. Because we learned a lot of like, psychology and cognitive science. And yeah, so I was really cool. While I was there, I was a teaching assistant at NJIT, for a lot of the UX courses. You actually taught a workshop there? I remember that. Yeah, that was about two years ago, right? Well, it was a really fun time does fly like it feels like that one-year important thing like this just doesn't like doubt.

It was a year ago, it was a year ago.

Thomas Morrell

So that was a really fun course. And I really appreciate you inviting me there. And it's awesome but I love that you took it upon yourself to kind of do something outside of just taking your typical course load, like you chose to lead this class, which is, yeah, for sure.

Shehab Ibrahim

Because like after, after my first real internship, I'll get into like my kind of timeline in a little bit. But after the first internship, where we worked out together, I noticed that, a lot of the stuff that they were teaching in college was very archaic. And it wasn't really preparing those for you know, for the big boy, a big boy or girl with a corporate environment where people are expecting you to know how to design on the fly, and not really with like eight years, this rubric that you have to check off. And I like that you came in, and he showed us how to workshop and facilitate workshops, regardless of where you were in a design process. And you also dissected the design process for them, which is really awesome. Just teaching them okay, here's, here's how to get all the context. And here's how to know Okay, this is the part of the design process you're in. And here are the tools to start ideating bass and show people Hey, I could generate ideas, and here's the value I bring, I thought I thought that was super valuable. And I also did that with a bunch of other professionals in the area. And that class for sure helped a lot of people just get into UX. I think a few people in the class ended up getting internships that that year that was really awesome. Like, I'm sure, yeah, you had a lot. You had a lot to do with that just teaching them like the real, real design process not watered down by academia. That was really awesome. Right on. Yeah, and I mentor UX students as well for some of the boot camps. And I see the same thing where they kind of feel like they have to go through every step of the process. Like no matter what,

like context-aware for sure. Yeah, like the typical situation, you're gonna pick up a job like midstream somewhere. And you have to figure out, you know, like, What's the best thing for me to do right now in order to bring the most value to this project? And so, yeah, yeah, knowing how to kind of facilitate those creative thinking workshops, whether it's, you know, ideation, or you know, kind of problem framing any of those is hugely beneficial. But um, that's so cool. And you want to know, like, like, the audience, like exactly what you did during that workshop, just like, give them a contact. Right on so if you remember, it was a while I kind of Yeah, I remember I remember you had told me that your team was, or your classmates were kind of in the process of sketching out like rough ideas like they had done some kind of upfront research. They had done some user interviews, they had done some things. And so I took the kind of sketching day, from a five-day design sprint, since they kind of had the upfront work of, you know, how am I going to solve this problem? Who is my user base, are what kind of problem and am I trying to solve? And but they hadn't yet really started concepting anything. And so I just walked in through that process of, you know, kind of sketching alone together and doing the kind of crazy eight. So you might have one idea. And that first idea, you tend to get stuck on to how do you break that up and quickly generate a new a number of new ideas and discussion like crazy eights where you quickly, you know, within eight minutes, EPA sketch eight different designs or alternatives for your design. And then, once you're happy, you kind of go through the whole kind of sketching process to create a full solution. And then they get to present to their teams in front of everybody. And everybody gets the, you know, be part of that democratic process where they vote on the best solutions, and everything. And so they put together, in the end, we got to paste up on that awesome wall of windows, you guys had in the university there, everybody's solution sketch where you have your sketch alongside with some notes. And they gave me a quick, two, three-minute presentation. And I mean, some of the ideas, and I felt like the level of sketching, like, the thinking behind what your students were doing in that class was pretty amazing. Like, when I was their age, I didn't know about any of this stuff. And so the fact that they have this knowledge at such a young age, they're going to be so far, I feel like ahead of the game. I think the cool part about college is that like, like, in contrast to a boot camp, we're kind of just learning with people that are either trying to break into the UX path, or maybe break into like a developer path or product management is I was working with industrial designers, interior designers, and learning from their perspective and how they apply the design process. There were. And I think that really burns a lot of different ideas and perspectives is like, we're not just thinking about things from the digital interface. They thought about those from the natural world, and how the digital interface would have that. So I think, if anyone's thinking about going into user experience, and you know, they don't like that, that tech scene, maybe do HCI at a school that offers a wide variety of design, and maybe you might find something that that you like to do other than us. Yeah, yeah, that's a fantastic point. And I think that's one of the best things about universities, like, obviously, universities can be really expensive. But they're a fantastic opportunity to discover what you really want to do. Like, when I went to college, I knew I wanted to school with an art program because I liked art. I didn't really know anything about design, especially graphic design, which is what I ended up focusing on. And so I think I saw on the course syllabus, as a graphic design course, and it said what it was, and I was like, Oh, my God, like, Where has this been all my life, like, I want to try that. And it was instant, like love at first sight for me. And I feel like I never would have really discovered that had I gone a different route. And so most of the people I've had on the show, obviously have been, you know, they started their career in some other field, and then went to a UX boot camp and are now working in the field. But I like that you bring the perspective of the college experience because that's such a different experience. It's one of like, no, like, endless like discovering new things and stuff, which is really cool. Now, I think the last time we spoke, you were about to begin an internship with it. Yeah. And I got to watch you kind of go through that process.

Oh. So like, sadly, I sat right behind you. I would always update you remember, like, Hey, I just got an interview with Nintendo. I bombed that interview. I just got into and I did awful. But then I ended up getting it. Death. Yeah, it was a tough process. And if anyone's gone through, like, the recruiting cycle, like in college, if you like so, so from what I've known, and what I've heard, a lot of companies are opening their internship cycle to Bootcamp, grads. So if you are doing the boot camp thing, apply as if you're a student. I don't think that's very interesting. Yeah, I know, I know for a fact. Google doesn't care if you are a boot camp grad. Dropbox does not care if you're a boot camp grad. I don't think Intuit cares if you're a boot camp grad either. Don't quote me on that, but don't self disqualify. Right and internship is an awesome way to just get real work experience. Put it on your portfolio and now in your future interviews you could speak on working with a team and a cross-functional like pod awesome well why don't you walk us through that kind of process of you know applying for these internships and then actually landed them like and then we'll get into you know what a day in the life looks like yeah so maybe I could start with how I got like my first job at a startup and then going into Prudential and going into it is like Yeah, absolutely. Those are very different experiences. Yeah, so so so the way I got my first job at a startup was purely luck-based Honestly, I didn't apply for it. I did really well in the intro user experience for us at NJIT. And from there, you know, that was offered to be a TA. And then on top of that, like the director of you, like a human-computer interaction was like hey, I'm working on this little side project startup. We have some seed funding from the National Science Foundation. Do you want to do some designs and pad your resume? You're totally welcome to come on board and it was like a paid position I got to put it in my hours and stuff and yeah, just my lap that was super fantastic. But there was a huge information gap. I had no idea what the internship application process was like honestly if I didn't have that internship fall into my lap I would have I would I wouldn't have gotten into credentials I wouldn't have known that design and paid design internships even existed like that I always had the preconceived notion that all internships, especially in the creative field, were unpaid you have to go into the city or you at the Get to know somebody to have a deep connection within the company like a family member to be anyone that's totally not true. It's actually very like a meritocracy. Um, so So yeah, so so I got that internship. And then that September I think I got an email that that potential was hiring for interns. That was an email from NJIT. So that's another cool part about like, like, like another plus about going to a school is that they have like a career program that's working year-round. Now with a boot camp. I think it's like you graduate, and then they help you for like a year to try to find the job. Isn't that how it works? I could be mistaken. I think every boot camp is different from the one I work with, they guarantee a job. Well, soccer your money back. So yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah, that one? I still wonder about that one. But yeah. I don't think a job is ever guaranteed. Even if you have all the experience in the world like you still have to keep track of because like the job searches are Oh, I'll go into that in a little bit. Because I'm currently like, in the process of it. Yeah. Yeah. Like if, if they guarantee a job, I would see you're very clear on that. I think your skills guarantee you a job and, and as sad as it is like your connections, right? Oh, well. Yeah. Like, your network, like the job search starts before you even need a job. Like, possibly another benefit of universities is that you will meet a lot of people. Absolutely a lot of networks. Your network grows exponentially. Like there's another funny story of how I got Prudential so so I see that email and that email says we're hiring software engineers, product managers, and I was about to skip over it because I wasn't interested in being a software engineer, honestly. Like I did come in as I came into NJIT as a computer science major. But then I took that intro to UX squares while I was a computer science major. And I made the fastest switch imaginable after that course. I was like if I could just draw rectangles all day and think about users. Yeah, like Sign me up. But that's one theory.

as boring as that sounds, it's fine. That there's a weird. Yeah, it's like, it's like, it's like, a pretty fulfilling thing. We're gonna go some, like gray rectangles into a pretty design. That's the best part for me. Yeah. So I keep getting sidetracked. I'm sorry, that's okay. That's okay. That's, so I get that email. And then on the bottom, they had like, you are a UX designer, right? I'm like, another sidetrack. I did see in your story that you said the UI UX convention naming convention is the right way to name it. Right? Cuz you need both. Yeah, wait, yeah, see, agree with that, or? I do because I keep hearing all these things online, where everybody's like, UI is not UX. UX is not UI. And I agree with that to a point, like the roles can be very different. But every place I've worked that you're kind of expected to run the full product design spectrum. And in the bottom line of things, like what gets in front of a user is the user interface. Though without a UI, there is no experience. So to just say like, I'm a UX designer, I'm not even gonna think about the UI is just, I think, bullish in my honest opinion. But that's just me. I 100% agree. And I personally, like, kind of rude awakening with that I always like, went into the UX world thinking, Okay, I have like, a bit amount of knowledge of how technology works my, like Computing and Engineering background. And I understand that this information architecture stuff and UX research methods, but then, you know, when it came to actually draw those rectangles and make it pretty after the wireframing phase, I struggled in that, and I noticed there was a gap. And, yeah, like, I think you have to get through that gap fast. Because as awful as it is, right, that's the first thing people are going to see, they're gonna see the visual design, they're going to see the hierarchy before they even see. Like they're thinking you have to, you have to kind of wow them with, with some good content design. Right on, and that's Yeah, that's gonna show through in your portfolio, and everything. Even if you're looking for much more UX research in UX wireframing. Patient architecture, you still need to present it really nicely. So having that skill set of visual design UI design is you know, it's always important. Yeah, like, a lot of people that might not have liked the visual design skills like brand themselves, like a T-shaped designer with like a research side. But if you want to be a product designer, or you'd like the true user experience designer, you're gonna have to bring your visual design chops up to a certain point. And I think the best way to do that, honestly, is like, as bad as it sounds like kind of fake it till you make it, like, copy really nice UI components that you see online, because like they were, and create your own patterns based on your own research. And then after a while, like, your skills with the tools will kind of match what you see in your head, right? Because I remember when I started, when I saw in my head did not come out on sketch as I wanted it to. Yeah, and like, all that potential to like, all the design prints, you guys helped me out. Like, it could be something super small, like a just like the pixel grid and not and not the 10-pixel grid or use these columns instead of this column with an enemy huge difference like, like, the Gestalt principles and stuff. Yeah. So let me get back to back to that email, the internship, the internship process. Yeah, I get that email. And they said UX UI designers, and I was like, Okay, I'll, I'll see if, if they want me, I haven't done really any work for the startup yet, because I weren't that from like October into June of 20 2019. And so I applied with absolutely no experience, except the work that I did in that UX class, which we pretty much did like a five-day sprint. Like from the sprint book, like Jake Knapp or jack Knapp, Jake Knapp. Jake Knapp. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we basically just tested an idea. And I bought this in five days. And I remember the person that interviewed me, I don't know if I should say any names. The person that interviewed new people knows him, he's awesome. He walked in, and I was so nervous. Um, so I did get the interview, just to say like, I bought that the interview. And when I came on site, I just remember waiting for the interview to come in. And I was so nervous. And I had, I had my case that I didn't have a portfolio I had it in in GitHub if that makes sense. So so on GitHub, you can have a readme file, and the readme kind of just looks like a document and I just documented the entire thing. And the worst part is that I couldn't access the internet on my laptop at Prudential because it was so bloated so I was like, Oh, I just blew this like this is over.

And then the interviewer was just like, wait, you could show me on my phone. And then and then I put the link on his phone and we were like scrolling through this and it was so awful, but he really liked that like I showed a process. The visual design was not there. I was prototyping on Azure. I don't know if you know what Azure is. Yeah, yeah, that's like some old school it's a powerful prototyping software but it's not for visual design. I did visual design and actually, it was bad it was very very bad. Oh, I remember those days it took a yeah yeah. And that's another thing you know, I do too is like after I downloaded sketch like that October like literally a month later are just like what? Why is NJIT teaching us how to use your? Like, the industry is not really using Azure. Um, so so when I was a TA like I really pushed for more industry-standard tools. And yeah, like so we started using Adobe XD and Figma things that were free and accessible as well as multiplayer. And then yeah, so so I interviewed with two Two designers on the team that I ended up working really closely with that summer. They, I guess they thought I had some potential because like, when I look back at it, like, the work I showed them was for sure rough. And so that's not to say like, oh, I was actually a lot better than I thought it was like, No, I, my skills were very low. And they saw that I wanted to be in the UX field, and they took a chance on me. So that's to say to you, the viewer watching, don't self disqualify, apply for the role. But you might have like, 10 rejections that might make you feel like crap, but then that one person or interviewer that like really sees that you have potential, we'll take a chance on you. And if I didn't get Prudential, I wouldn't have met like a whole bunch of awesome designers that are helping me to this day, I wouldn't have probably landed into it. And then all the opportunities I'm getting right now probably would have wouldn't have happened. So yeah, so I worked at Prudential for the better part of a year. I started in June of 2019. And I was working on a specific project. Three months just didn't feel like enough, right? And I remember asking my manager like, hey, like, I'm interested in like, extending, and he was super onboard of that. You had him on on the show, I think I think he was your first interviewer, or is it, Brian? No, not Brian. It was. Evan was my manager. Yeah. Brian was number one. Evan was number two. And then number two, oh, yeah. So Evan was my manager at the time. And he was super. Yes, super great guy. He taught me a lot. And he still is. Yeah, he was like, super onboard. And I got extended up until like, right before COVID-19 hit. And on top of that, took all that I was also promised, like a return internship to pre Gen, which, which I was done and take. And so I kind of got lazy with like recruiting season that usually starts from August to October. Remember that viewers? The recruiting season is August to October, that's when most of the companies open up their applications for internships for the next summer. And then what happened? Like a business started, I wouldn't say crumbling, but like the design team had some, like a rocky time. And they ended up rescinding the design internship and they had an engineering internship. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I think the whole program got canceled, which was unfortunate.

I think they're starting it back up. I heard that. I heard that. I didn't Gallus that year. You're in my last guess? Yes.

That's right. She did say that they're working on it. So those of you in the New Jersey area looking for an internship, it could be a really good opportunity for you there. And I highly recommend that the people working there are awesome. Yeah, yeah. So So and then I was like, Okay, I don't think I want to take the software engineering internship. So around, I think it was like November of 2019. I was just like, Okay, I'm going into full recruiting mode. And I didn't get an offer until I think that February or January. So three months, three months of automated rejection emails, don't let that deter you. From toxic recruiters, some worked out, some didn't. And then I ended up getting an offer with Intuit, which is like a tech company in Silicon Valley that makes QuickBooks TurboTax. Mint. And yeah, I got to work on the QuickBooks team. And this was during, and this is during COVID-19. So the world has shut down small businesses are really hurting. I don't want to get too deep into the work that I did. But I got to work on a pretty high visibility project that that that's like on QuickBooks right now. So that's really cool. I'm so happy for you that you got to continue that internship even with affecting everything because I know before the show started, we were talking a lot of your friends’ internships got canceled once everybody kind of went home for COVID people went like the top of the food chain and like the internship space, right like that. People that got like UX internships like to get it like going through all those rounds, and then getting emails saying, hey, things have changed. We're gonna rescind the offer. That sucks. What was really nice is that, like, I think the community kind of came together. And when those people posted on LinkedIn and Twitter, that their internships got canceled, a lot of people retweeted them, and they were able to find a pretty nice position pretty quickly. So that was really cool. And like, especially if you pass that, that bar with Google and Airbnb, you're kind of like, de-risk, right? To a lot of organizations and startups. So they, they actively, like sought them out to maybe what do they kind of ends and out of that process of landing a role at a company like into their big one? Do they have a great design team? Like for sure. Yeah, really cool design team. So So what it was pretty similar to Prudential, so the process of Prudential was a phone screening with a recruiter, you get invited to be on site where two interviewers kind of interview it was more of a conversation at Prudential. Then apparently you just get the offer. Right? It was actually pretty quick and honestly, pretty nice. No, wait, wait, I forgot one part of the process on top of the phone screening, they also had like the hirevue Digital assessment and where you have to record yourself on a webcam. That's, I think I like mentally refreshing that I'm literally repressing that memory. Yeah, you have no idea how many times I've had to do those. And they're terrible. They're awful. Yeah, exactly. So I think like, most of the banks do that. So if you don't want to do that, steer clear from like, buying, like, financial tech, I did the hirevue, then I got into a super day where I spoke with the two interviewers. And then and then I got the offer. So really fast, while at into it, it's you apply, then you go through a phone screening, and then you talk to a designer, and they give you a design challenge, okay, they have to, you then have to do the design challenge in another interview, where they also will review your portfolio after you just talked about the design challenge, and then you get an offer or rejected. So a lot more, a lot more. Okay, here, bring your skills to the table on day one, and then submit, then hey, we see potential in you at Prudential. Let's help foster that, depending on what where you are in your journey, you definitely want to work with the recruiter and ask him what are the expectations of this internship? Is this more of a learning experience? Or are you looking for a certain set of skills because at some places like they already want, like somebody that can kind of hit the ground running and just to launch their own product that sucks, right? Because of an internship, you're supposed to learn the reality of a thing. Okay? That's really interesting in a way, it's a little intimidating and scary being, you know, a new designer, like having that all on your shoulders. But in another sense, it's really empowering and kind of exciting, where you can come in and make a really big impact on what's like a typical day in the life of a UX intern look like. So I think that that depends very largely on your manager. So a day in the life at the startup, they had like a Prudential a daily life into it look very, very different. At the startup, I guess I could say I was pretty much very self-sufficient.

I had this product idea. And I had to figure out how I was going to get it from zero to one, right? There was no senior designer that was always like, hey, maybe you could move that square to the left, and then have a drop shadow on that. So it looks like it's hovering and it looks more likable blah, blah, blah, this is on me, right? Like I have this look good. If your skills aren't there, you don't know what you don't know. And you're going to ship stuff that isn't the best straight, everyone starts somewhere at Prudential. Prudential is really cool. I think I think, in the beginning, it was kind of like shadowing a bunch of different designers to see their process, how they were, how they approach challenges, and how they, approach not only design challenges, but business challenges in meetings, which I think was the biggest Crash Course, right? I've never, I've never been in a real meeting with people that have no idea what you do for a living, right? So it was really cool to see someone stay calm, collected, and say, Hey, here's the scope of this project. Here's why, why it's not done yet. It will be done after this, this that. And the other thing I'm just waiting on, on this, and data. So that's really cool. Like seeing the politics behind everything. I had into it, it was different because I didn't really shadow anybody. I was thrown in my own pod. But yeah, like I could see how somebody that that wasn't fortunate enough to have, like, you know, like a really comprehensive long term internship at a big company might be intimidated, is like, it's really hard to like be in those meetings and like, give a case for why design is valuable. Because I think you're always going to be doing that a lot of people don't, I think I think it's a lot better now. Like we for sure have a seat at the table. But there are going to be people that think design is Hey, could you just make this pretty, like the product manager would give you wireframes? And they'll be like, make this pretty? And you have to be like, Hey, listen, I don't think you did your due diligence with this. But this wireframe is cool if I could see like the research you did or something like that, or what analytics are, are informing these designs. If you're able to say stuff like that, you're able to, to kind of take back your process, if that makes sense. And yeah, that's, that's the reality of it. Right? Like, like, like, you own your process and you're the advocate for the customer. You have to make sure that you're not just making it pretty and you're designing for unmet customer needs day in the life that into it was Hey, you're thrown into this pod. You have this business problem, figure out a way to solve this problem by creating a product that's going to be embedded into the ecosystem. Well, it potentially was more right like step by step Hey, you helped me with this little piece of the flow. And I got to see a wide range of different experiences. Yeah, good kind of the scope of different things. work. And that probably has to do with the fact that into it. I imagine I've worked there. I don't know anybody who works here. But they see they probably have a very robust set of built-out mature design and culture designed for residential. And this was actually something I think that helped me, along with probably what it did for you, too are you kind of learn how to sell Human-Centered Design, is that because you're working with a lot of people who may have never worked with the designer before, so you have to kind of educate them on the process of what you're doing, why you're doing it. Yeah, I'm glad you got to see such a scope of the kind of different projects. That's fantastic. What would you say, is the biggest challenge you encountered throughout these internships, being comfortable in the fact that they aren't going to be responsible for strategy? Okay, right. Like you want to have a crazy impact. And you want to, like be the reason why you drove a product. But sometimes you have to kind of sit there and listen, understand what the people that are actually driving the impact need, and just be a support, right? And then from there, you kind of get invited into the like, into those meetings, where you are able to make those big decisions and have some, some impact. If that makes sense. A good example would be like, you're starting at the beginning of the design process, you're in discovery, right? You don't want to do research, and then you know, create a deck of like, here's, here's how we're going to solve this problem, right? You want to understand the problem, right? But then you want to let a senior designer tribe that that discussion, and then give them the research that you did, so they can make their own decision, they have more context to the business than you don't want to make the big decisions and come across as like cocky. Right? Okay, you want to let you know, the more senior people make the decision, and you are kind of supporting that. Okay, by interesting in your understanding of the process, if that makes sense. It's gonna lead to lead from behind or lead while you're not in charge, which is a tough thing to do.

Yeah, I think as a junior, that's, that's the best way to get to be influential, like you are in a principal designer, you're an elite designer, people aren't really going to trust your intuition yet. And that's, that's rightfully so like, like, if you haven't launched any products, you haven't failed enough, if that makes sense, right? Just saying, Okay, I understand I don't have this experience. But hey, I know you're in this part of the process. I did some research for this target demographic. Let me know if this could help you. Like I remember you were doing some, some work. I don't want to get into the details. But you might remember that like, competitive analysis, that guy I sent you, like with, with, like, all all the user flows, and like why this would be the best. I didn't go into that meeting saying, Hey, here's the strategy. I saw the competitors. I'll just like, hey, Tom, I know you're working on this. Here's a competitive analysis. And you could use that. I believe. I do that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So like, I think that's how like you, you can get influenced and you could buy in trust. And hope doesn't sound transactional. Just like, here's what I could do to help the people that are helping me right now. Yeah, no, no, it's not transactional at all. It's, it's being a good team player, it's building, as you said, trust in yourself, if you can kind of deliver something, when not specifically asked to that is make people trust you more, kind of depend on you more and go to you more, or ask you for more things more involved. Yeah, we're contributing. Fantastic. That's the biggest challenge, like knowing that you're influential, but in a special way, being that you've landed these two insurance ships? And what would be your advice for somebody looking to do an internship? Like, how would they best go about, I guess, differentiating themselves from all the other applicants that are out there? Yeah, so that's a that's a really good question. Um, when I started, if I knew what I knew today about how competitive like the internship, like, like space is, like, just out of college, a lot of people like in the San Francisco area, they're kind of like, they kind of like have the information gap already bridged that, hey, there's a recruiting season, there's a bunch of companies that will pay you to do the thing that you like to do. Here's how you could get these jobs, right. And what you need, especially for the design, you need a portfolio. I didn't have a portfolio. In the beginning, I was lucky that I created a GitHub, a GitHub repository that I could like passes a portfolio, but you want a website. It doesn't matter if you've coded it if you're using Squarespace, but you have to get like, Hey, I'm so and so I'm a designer from here. Here's my mission statement, check out these projects below. And you want to have maybe at least three I think three projects is a sweet spot and go through your entire process. It's okay if one of them is a novel and one of them is just some pictures or captions about your project. Just make sure You're able to, to wow them right, in the beginning, show, show the finished designs on the top. Go into the process, and then go into what you learned and what you would have done differently if you had more resources more time. And make sure you memorize those projects, right? Those have to be your project that can't be somebody else's, it can't be like, it could be group work. But make sure you say hey, here, here's my role in this group work. Here's what other people gave me. Here's how I assisted. Because at the end of the day, like so yeah, so so have have a website, go on LinkedIn, just type in product design, intern UX design intern in the city that you want, most are referring to the remote now or give you the option of being remote. That's awesome. So it doesn't really matter where you are, you could be in the Midwest with no real tech pub in the area. And you could get a job at San Francisco, I was working from San Francisco all the way in New Jersey, so totally fine to to apply to places that might be outside of your range. And a lot of these internships also, if they're not remote, they'll literally pay for your housing and your flight over. So that's really cool. I was fortunate enough to do two internships as well, one in New York City, which was paid hourly, which is fantastic. And one in London, England. And that was through, you know, a friend of a friend kind of thing. And they paid for my flight, and my lodging, but everything else was on me. So they are available now. I would tell people, I think internships are a great experience, but I would probably we're away from ones that are unpaid. Absolutely. Yeah, I've been approached by like people that are just creating startups, and they're like, Hey, I don't have any money. But I'd love some free work from you. And if it's like a don't exploit people, yeah, like there's a, there's a bunch of opportunities that are paid in the design space. Like it's actually kind of insane because I remember growing up and most creative fields kind of met like financial suicide, but I think that's the opposite. Now,

I think there's, there's a lot of like economic mobility within, in the creative field. It's an extension of, of technology and engineering like that, like as we're seeing the financial benefit of the career in UX is, it's a great return on investment if you've put in that work either in university or in a UX Bootcamp. Just on a personal note for myself, going from graphic design to UX design, being that like, I've been in the field now for a while, like, I've literally doubled my salary, you can get that kind of returns on this type of career. So just want to put that out there. What would you say now that these are over, you're looking for a job? What are the biggest lessons that you'll take with you from those internships into your career? Yeah, I think I think number one is your visual craft has to be at a certain point, like a lot of companies will have their own specific UX research like a business group. So a lot of them are like hey, we want a product designer but we want them to lean more towards visual design and motion design. So for sure that your skills out there I know it's difficult especially if you're coming from an engineering side and not more of an art side but it will for sure pay off and if you're able to do like all of that if you're able to code as well as visual design you're for sure going to be a rock star and be very coveted and there'll be very easy to to navigate interviews as people will ask you like how how do you go through your proper like your process of making something visually appealing and you know, you never want to say it's subjective like you want to have an objective process of how you go across that's that's competitive analysis or mood boarding or want to have a very objective process that's my second piece of advice have a process the first one is digital design the second one is have a process and understand when when you're at what side of the process I think the last piece of advice is like for sure just just be a sponge that was told to me by on my first day at Prudential be a sponge learn everything you don't have to know all the answers, especially as an intern. So just just just keep learning and it's it's going to pay off like you don't have to create that pitch deck that they get the product launched. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Nice. Nice. So what's on the horizon for you? What's next? What's next? Yeah, I'm just I just graduated college and I'm looking for a cool role. Right? Right. Make some cool stuff. Fantastic. And so obviously anybody listening if there are any great roles out there for she had a good portfolio and allow a lot of passion to bring to the table. I think I'm going to name this episode. Don't let the lack of a portfolio get in the way of your passion. Because you definitely brought a lot of passion to our team, a lot of intrigue. And like you said, being a sponge-like you were always looking for areas to learn or ways to get involved in ways to help out which was hugely beneficial to us and will definitely be you know, very beneficial To your career, and thanks. Yeah, there's a lot of fun working with you. Yeah, for sure. It was really fun working with you all as well. Thank you for having me on the podcast and that Prudential. Oh, my pleasure, man. Thanks so much for being on. Really glad you got to be a part of that. Sure. Thanks.

And that's the show everybody thank you so much for tuning in today. If you haven't already please subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. I will be releasing a show about every other week or so, if you'd like to be a friend to the show, leaving a review or comment on Apple would be very much appreciated. Share a link to the show with your friends, or anyone else you might know who is interested in UX design. Feel free to recommend topics you'd like to hear discussed and if you have any questions about design. Design careers or anything else for that matter, you can DM me on Instagram at user flows. If you'd really like to help me out, you can visit, thomasmorrell.com/survey to let me know what you'd like to learn on the show or you're more or less. Thank you I appreciate you listening, and let's go create something.

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