Role: UI/UX Design Intern
‍
My (lovely) team: Sharon Carmichael, Cody Frew, Michel Samah, Ian Kim, Gabi Gordon, Craig Santa Ruiz, Yunyan

Timeline: June - December 2018
‍
For six months from June to December of 2018, I've had the privilege of growing as a UI/UX Design Intern in ServiceNow’s Design Experience Organization (DEO for short). During the entirety of my internship, I mainly focused on Visual and Interaction Design. Instead of working on one specific project, my work varied from single features to larger projects. Due to privacy agreements, I can't publicly share some of my work in full detail, but if you're interested in learning more about the results I delivered, feel free to contact me.

When I came in as an intern, I was fortunate to join the team during the company's rebrand. Because of this, many of my responsibilities involved rebranding some features of ServiceNow's main software.

I worked closely with the Design System team to create coherent designs, and I met with project managers to meet guidelines and discuss new ways to rebrand some of their existing features.

Guided Tour Designer - Designing a new experience

This feature was one of the larger projects that I worked on for the majority of my internship. GTD (for short) is a feature that allows the user to "design" their own tour for a page by creating customizable tooltips. You can view the official documentation here!

I was responsible for creating a smoother and more intuitive experience by collaborating with researchers to identify user pain points. I then translated these pain points into opportunities by analyzing certain parts of the tour-creating process and redesigning these parts to make the process more efficient and seamless. I was also in charge of the visual design of this feature in order to adhere to ServiceNow's new brand guidelines.

Rebranding the overall look

This was one of the smaller side projects that I worked on throughout my entire internship. It was more of an exercise to train my eye for visual design. This project allowed me to get familiar with the design components that were part of ServiceNow's design system, and it gave me creative freedom to create a new look and feel for their main portal.

I also had the opportunity to redesign some of the company's main web pages. These are part of their app store's home, about, help, and FAQ pages, which are live now.

I created responsive designs that are scalable for mobile and web, and I redesigned these pages in a way that emulates the company's visual style to deliver a cleaner experience. Go ahead and check out the sites!

Another aspect of my work involved tweaking current interactions in certain features to make them more usable. I did this by identifying key interactions of the product and then creating prototypes to test my concepts.

Redesigning shortcuts

Another smaller project that I worked on was recreating the user experience and the interactions of a keyboard shortcut feature.
Through this project, I was able to step away from the visual design aspect and focus more on key interactions. I worked directly with an engineer before handing it off for approval.

To put it bluntly: accessibility is important!

Before I began this internship, I knew very little about accessibility. I knew what it was, but I didn't know what it meant to design for it. My mentor Gabi was the one who opened my eyes to this part of the world that often gets overlooked.

As simple as it sounds, designing for accessibility is the basis for creating good design.

Since I mainly focused on visual and interaction design, I had to think differently than what I was used to. Rather than focusing on what looks "prettier", I had to take a step back and put myself in someone else's shoes. What about the people who are color blind? Or those that have visual impairments? What about those that can't physically use a mouse? These were the types of questions that I had to constantly remind myself of when designing for accessibility.

ServiceNow was making a move to be more AAA compliant (i.e. a conformance level that scores how accessible your product is), which gave me the opportunity to also redesign some of their features to meet a wider range of user needs.

If you're interested in learning more about accessibility, this medium article describes some design choices that a designer should consider, which has helped me a lot in my internship.

Overall, I had an unforgettable six months working for ServiceNow. This internship pushed my abilities as a designer, allowed me to make new lasting relationships, and gave me a greater outlook to the world of design.

If you want to know more about my work or what I did in more detail, don't be shy! Feel free to contact me.

Edit (as of 2022): I found an archived medium article where I informally documented my thoughts at the time I was an intern. It's an unfinished article with unfinished thoughts, but I thought I'd go ahead and publish it anyway so you can check it out if you're curious. ☺

Thanks for stopping by!