UX Design Internship @ ecobee
Jan - Apr 2020, Part-time internship
After my internship at RBC innovation, an internal R&D team, I realized that I still didn’t have experience working on consumer-facing product, which is absolutely something I should explore. I believe that the ability of transforming user insight into concrete design under business constraints is critical, so I joined ecobee as a part-time UX design intern during my last semester study at OCAD. Working two days a week and taking 5 classes at school, including working on my thesis, can be challenging, but it’s all worth it.
During my time at ecobee, I collaborated with product managers, content strategists, and developers to improve the mobile app design using components from the design libraries to ensure consistency. Create development-ready design assets for both iOS and Android, and provide detailed design specs for developers.
Tools:
Sketch, Zeplin, Delighted, Maze, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Confluence
Scorecard: Success criterias of the new ui design
Hardware UI improvement Project
I also worked on a UI improvement project for the ecobee smart thermostat. I was collaborating with a designer dedicated to the tstat squad until he got laid-off due to covid-19. While the team was figuring out the reallocation, I took the lead on the project.
I looked into usability heuristics principles, and analyzed customer insight from the net promoter score to create this scorecard which includes tasks to complete, and the rating criteria for the overall experience.
Later, I setup meetings with stakeholders such as researchers, PM, and developers to learn from their expertise on the project. I gained very positive feedback from the team and modified the scorecard so that it is ready for our remote user testing sessions.
What I learned in this project is that it is important for designers to recognize who might be the key resource that can help us to get a deeper understanding on the project, and take the initiative to reach out. Although I only worked on this project for 4 months, learning from those people who have been working on it for years and looking into internal research that has been done help me to stand on the shoulders’ giants, and pave the way for the success.
Design Master File
Providing sufficient support to ecobee consumers is critical for the company, but a big pain point for the customer service team. The fast product iterations and the expansion of product lines make the design file outdated and cannot meet their demand anymore.
During my spare time, I created a design master file that arranges all the existing mobile designs to well-documented flows based on users’ tasks to support the customer services team.
Other Activities
Observing Focus Group Sessions
Helping (chatting..) at OCAD Career Fair
Takeaways
It was my first time working on consumer-facing product and I learned a lot from the amazing people I worked with: their dedication to the craft, the relentless iterations toward a better experience, and also the communication skills needed when dealing with push backs.
Being part of the design team lets me realize that every design decisions take effort to formulate and should be rational: even minor things like a banner design is the result chosen from multiple versions and iterations. Being able to participate in the product development process lets me see the big picture and how my work could provide value to the company. All of this gives me the opportunity to hone my skills and practice what I have learned in the wild.