As I am wrapping up my summer internship as a UX Design intern at Lutron, I thought it would be a great idea for me to pen down my thoughts while my thoughts are still fresh.
In this post, I’ll share the 5 most impactful things I learned during my time at Lutron. I'm hoping to pass along some of what I learned from my time here so that it might help other interns out there.
As part of my preparation for applying, I spent months working intensively on my portfolio and I would highly recommend anybody who is looking for a career in UX, to start working on their portfolio before even thinking about applying for jobs.
I was aware of Lutron as an electronics company since several of the electrical outlets I had seen in school or restaurants had their logo on them. But my real introduction to Lutron was when the company presented what they do and how UX works at the company at a class presentation for I543: Meaning and Form in HCI. I was blown away by their hands-on UX approach and how much of an impact they were making.
Cut to 8 months later, I found myself having the opportunity to interview for a UX design summer internship at Lutron. I could immediately tell how much the UX interviewers were passionate about what they were doing and even more so about the whole company.
I was having a nightmare of a start to the year 2022 since I was back home visiting my friends and family in India during a devastating third wave of the pandemic. In the middle of this gloomy period, I was delighted to have received the good news of securing a UX internship at Lutron.
Even though I had other prospects, picking Lutron was a no-brainer for me and I could not have picked a better place to start my internship in the US.
As the user tests progressed, I saw myself comprehending the persona better and understanding and being in their shoes and how they view and approach a task given to them. Observing their behaviour, I was most intrigued by how much they loved their profession and were even more passionate about Lutron and its products.
During my internship, I tried my best to question and understand as much as I could. Regardless of what the topic was whether it was my project, a huddle meeting or even a coffee chat. I always made it a point to imbibe and absorb as much as I could from a conversation.
It is obvious that UX practised in school is massively different from what it is in the industry. One major takeaway is that I have been guilty of listening to one user rather than all of the users in my school projects but I learned quite the opposite during my corporate experience where all of my decisions were based on hard proven data.
I am known among my friends for being the best secret keeper cause I forget about it as soon as I am told. I joke that I have the memory of a goldfish.
But during my internship, I made it a point to take down notes from all of my meetings, document all of my actions and even maintained a work journal to keep a track of everything that I was a part of. This has become a habit that I will carry forward and it has made a huge difference to the way I manage my work.
A statement that my stakeholder often used to say. I take a lot of pride in keeping an organized track of all the work that I am currently doing but something that I used to struggle with in the past is keeping a track of my future work.
As a result of this internship, I now keep an organized miro board, Figma files, and all of the files that are related to the project in the cloud. It not only has made my work easier, but it also helps other collaborators to browse through my work.
In conclusion, this has been a summer of great professional and personal growth and I could not have picked a better company to pursue an internship in.