Near the end of the summer holidays this year, I was fortunate enough to be invited to work as an intern for an education technology startup, The Aspirers, for 90 hours in total, over two weeks. During my time there, I gained a lot of valuable insight about how startups are run and experience what working life is like.
My role was to design a proof-of-concept wireframe demonstration for a web platform. I was granted the privilege of being able to use any tools for the design process. This allowed me to make the decision of what tools to use myself. After a bit of initial research into design tools, I eventually settled on Figma. It was intuitive and it didn’t take long for me to pick it up, which made it a perfect fit for the job.
Being assigned a job to do was also novel to me; I normally work on side projects that are completely under my control. This helped to develop my communication skills, as I had to understand and work on an implementation of someone else’s idea, rather than following my own vision.
In addition to communication skills, I also had to exercise good time management. I don’t usually have deadlines for side projects, but I was due to complete the wireframe within two weeks. This led me to carefully plan out what I had to do and break down larger tasks into smaller ones, which allowed me to work efficiently. These skills carried over to multiple other parts of my life, including schoolwork and side projects.
Finally, I also improved my presentation skills. Often, I would meet with my supervisor to give an update on my progress, and ensure that I was up to date with the project requirements. This boosted my confidence presenting my ideas and work to others.
On the first day of my second week, a representative from a venture company held a meeting with the founders of the startup to receive updates on the project. I was to present the wireframe I had worked on to demonstrate the main features of the web platform. In doing so, I received questions about the wireframe, ranging from small details in the interface to the general user experience and the “flow” of the application. I found Figma’s prototyping features extremely useful for this; it helped to add interactivity to the wireframe in order to demonstrate how a user would typically interact with the application. From this experience, I learnt that it’s very important to keep the requirements of investors and stakeholders in mind, as well as users, when designing a product.
However, it wasn’t just communication and presentation skills that I learnt and developed during my time working as an intern. Due to the nature of the startup and the product, I also learnt a lot about higher education in different countries. One of my tasks was to create a comparison of applying for and studying at universities in different countries from content provided by my supervisor. I also was given the opportunity to research university courses and the timeline of the university application process. This information will certainly be useful for me when I have to submit my own application.
In conclusion, I enjoyed my first internship very much, and learnt a lot along the way.