This just summarizes how I got my internship, what I learnt and themistakes I made. There were much more learnings and the mistakes, but I have only mentioned the major ones here.

I have interned at only 2 places and for a total period of 11 months or so. One was a tech consultancy and other was a early stage startup.

For the first one, designer at the company reached out to me asking whether I was interested in a UI design internship and I readily said yes. Obviously, I had to go through the whole hiring process.
‍
About the company: At that time, they had only 2 people in the design team and they were also hiring for bunch of other roles too.

So, I sent him a mail with my portfolio and resume.

I got a design assignment, best part about it was : it had 4 prompts and I had to choose one & work on it. None of the tasks were related to what the company was doing & weren't too tedious.

I completed the assignment in 2-3 days and documented whole thing on Notion. (They had asked me to do on Notion, as far as I know it's upto us on how one wants to submit their assignment)

Personally, I prefer to submit my design assignments as medium post drafts, since it is much easier to put together than a notion doc and I don't spend a lot of time on making that presentation look better.

I had a one hour call with the designer. It mostly revolved around why I took particular decision and feedback. In addition to that, I took them over few of my previous works (all of them were conceptual case studies).
This went went well and I had another call to know about company as well as for them to know me.

That's how I got my first internship.

Mistake I made
I had the least idea regarding stipend for an intern and didn't take the initiative to find that out. I was happy with whatever they offered since it was my first internship, but looking back, I feel I could have asked a bit more.

I loved working with the designers there. The folks were cool, they wanted me to publish my assignment as a case study as well as didn't have a problem if I took up freelance projects as well. Design sprints were hectic sometimes but it was always a great experience.
‍
Things I worked on :
- I started off with working on a UI component library which was based on Ant Design System and was for a healthcare product.
- For the same healthcare product, worked with the PMs to design individual flows for it.
- In addition to that, I helped out in making changes to already existing designs of an app built for lawyers.
- I designed an landing page for an event management product. Designing landing pages is something I always kinda find it difficult and this exercise made me realize that.

I am still trying to improve on how I design landing pages (if you have resources that might help one here, do send them :) )

Two Major learnings for me:
- I worked on a UI library, learnt a lot by experimenting with components. Increased my pace of working in Figma
- Now I know what is like to switch between project of different domains and work. Though one works majorily on one project, they tend to help in others too.

They were happy to extend the internship for me but I chose to move on because of :
- This was more of a UI design role & wanted to explore other aspects of designs as well.
- After completing 2 months in a tech consultancy environment, now wanted to know how it was to work in a product based company.

As my internship was coming to a close, I planned on taking a break for a month or so & then look for another one. But I came across an opening for intern on twitter and sent a DM with my resume and portfolio right away.

They went through my portfolio and scheduled a call with me. They didn't give me a design task or anything. They wanted me to present my portfolio and there were a bunch of questions on my design decision. The whole call was around 1-1:15 hrs. This was pretty much simple process.

I didn't think I would get the internship since I was very nervous with led to stammering (alot per se) during the interview.

But ended up getting it, they cared more about my work than my stammering :).

Within 1 week of joining, I was down with COVID - great start, right? After that I interned for 2 1/2 months.

I asked for an extension of 6 months, as I had an option to do internship for my final sem credits (an ECE student working as a design intern? That's a story for another time :P )

They were happy with my work so far, hence they agreed. And I loved working with the whole team there.
‍
Things I worked on :
- I started off with a design sprint to update the existing screens with a new design language the company had decided to change to. There weren't any major changes in the flows, just minor tweaks here and there which would make it better.
- Went through some existing documentation and recorded user interviews to get a better understanding of what we are trying to build as well as who we are building for.
- Designed minor features as well as small iterative changes in the app.
- I worked in collaboration with other designers to design the new onboarding flow (not live). There were multiple iterations here as every time we were finishing the designs, we would find a part which could be improved.
- Also, worked on a new feature's flow. As soon as we got the feedback, used to go back and figure out what could be done better. There were also changes due to 3rd party compliance. It was a really big iterative process.
- Worked on few growth tasks and designed mailers in addition to product design tasks.

Major Learnings :
- I joined the company before they launched the product and saw all the growth, changes and how they adapted to different scenarios.
- I saw a change in what kinda work I was doing as well, I started out with UI design tasks, then moved to collaborating with other people on different tasks, then got to work on new features and then took a bit responsibility as well.

So, coming to stipend part, I knew before applying what was I gonna get since they had mentioned the range in the JD for interns and it was a good amount for me and an increase as well.

Mistake I made was :
I didn't document my work properly. I realized this when I had to start applying for jobs & didn't have anything proper to show. I had worked on a lot of things, documenting it would have helped me. So, ALWAYS DOCUMENT WHAT YOU ARE WORKING ON!‍

So yeah, that's it. I summarized that really quick I hope. Both hiring process took 7-10 days and I was lucky to get to work with some really cool people.

If you have any questions or anything, feel free to reach out to me
‍