6 lessons I learnt in my design internship at Intuit
This past summer, I was hired as the first ever experience design intern at Intuit UK. Here’s what I learnt.
About Intuit
Intuit is a global financial software company whose mission is to power prosperity for self employed, small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) and accountants around the world.
It was an exciting time to be a part of the company as they’re expanding globally. Intuit is in a phase of high growth in the UK market and I was a part of a team that worked on ambitious projects.
I worked on QuickBooks, Intuit’s cloud based platform that provides financial and tax management solutions for SMBs and accountants.
How it all started
When I first saw the role advertised, I wasn’t familiar with Intuit and was curious to know who they were and what they did. It wasn’t until I dug a bit deeper into the company, their mission and their products that I became really excited about applying for the internship.
Intuit is a multi-billion dollar global tech company, so that was a huge draw.
I liked their mission to power financial prosperity around the world. But beyond that, I was fascinated because Intuit is a design driven company.
In 2017, Intuit was one of the most innovative companies in design. Forbes referred to them as a ‘30 year old startup’ for being able to reinvent itself constantly. Being design driven and customer centric are core to the company’s business strategy and innovation.
I knew that I would get to work within a well established design team and have the chance to learn as much as I could in a fast paced environment. I knew that an opportunity like this would set a great foundation for my design career. When I received the offer, I was ecstatic. This would be my first step into the world of design and technology.
Here are the 6 lessons I learnt in my design internship at Intuit:
1. The importance of setting goals to define success
At the start of the internship, I sat down with my manager and we discussed goal setting for the 3 months I was there. As the team’s first design intern, I had the opportunity to define the experience the way I wanted it to be, which meant I needed to figure out what success would look like.
On top of wanting to have an end to end experience, working on all aspects of the design process, I also wanted to develop skills such as presenting my work and contributing to design feedback sessions. I broke this down into outcome, sub-goal and metrics of success.
I had the opportunity to define the experience the way I wanted it to be, which meant I needed to figure out what success would look like.
2. Learning comes from asking a lot of questions
As with starting anywhere new, I was unfamiliar with the projects and all the processes that were in place. To quickly get up to speed, I asked a lot of questions. I didn’t want to make any assumptions, neither did I want to trick myself into believing I knew what was happening.
Initially, I felt overwhelmed. But this was because I had to absorb so much new information coming at me constantly. One of my colleagues, a Senior Interaction Designer on the team reassured me by saying that it took him many months to get used to everything when he first started.
I tried to be as open and honest with my team as possible — letting them know when I was struggling and what I was struggling with. I saw the value of sharing my designs to my team regularly to get quick feedback. This was how I learnt to improve my craft. At times however, I didn’t want to take up too much of their time but eventually realised that I was there to learn from them.
My team was really supportive and took their time to answer my questions. I also reached out to colleagues in the wider company while working on projects that required cross-team knowledge or experience, including the London Training Manager and the Project Manager who managed QuickBooks India. People were really happy to help.
3. Growth happens when you embrace fear and discomfort
As the only junior designer on the team, there were a lot of times when I felt like I didn’t have much to contribute. I was surrounded by senior designers who had years of experience. With my limited experience, how could I bring value to the team?
There were many times during my internship when I was afraid to make mistakes. That in itself was a learning curve. I realised that it was OKAY to make mistakes. Growth happened when I reflected on those experiences and understood how I could have done better next time.
Making mistakes = growth and learning.
4. Strong team collaboration creates better design outcomes
Working in an agile development process meant that designers, product managers and engineers regularly had meetings to synchronise our workflows. Design doesn’t happen in a silo, so it was helpful and important
to hear different colleague’s input on my design ideas.
The engineers helped provide an answer to whether my designs were technically feasible or whether they would be ‘heavy lifts’ i.e. take a long time to build. Product Managers constantly reminded us of the deadlines, i.e. time constraints of the projects. But as with any team collaboration, a healthy amount of discussion and debate on project constraints meant that we could reach an agreement on decisions for the projects going forward.
5. Understanding the business context to design better
Early on during the internship, I had many one to one meetings with teams outside of the ‘triad’ (Design, Product and Engineering) in order to understand the business as a whole. I met with Sales, Marketing, Customer care (now Customer Success) teams. I also listened in on customer care calls, participated in user research sessions and completed training that got our customers familiar with QuickBooks.
I sat in on countless meetings with Seniors and Leads where they shared and discussed the vision and strategies of the business. This helped to ground my design work within a business context. I knew that I wasn’t just designing for customers but also helping the company achieve their business goals.
The more I got to know the business, the more I realised just how much everyone at Intuit cared about making sure their work served the end customer really well. Knowing that there was such an alignment of vision and strategy on customer experience across the entire business made it so much better for me to design.
A third of the way through my internship, the business strategy pivoted. Luckily, I had started on the right project; the other project I was going to work on was dropped due to the changes. Had I started off with the project that would eventually be dropped, I would have had to be flexible and adaptable enough to the changes in priorities.
6. Designing for B2B is hard but rewarding.
I got a taste of designing for complex cloud B2B platforms. It was hard work but intellectually stimulating and so rewarding when I’d have a light bulb moment and understand how all the different pieces fit together on a particular project.
Unlike designing for consumer facing apps or websites, designing for QuickBooks’ desktop cloud platform meant I needed to understand complex problems: The changing UK tax system, how financial management works and the relationship between accountants and their clients (small businesses).
Concluding Thoughts
Work at Intuit was fast paced and constantly changed but customer centric and innovative. It felt like I had joined a startup when in reality Intuit is a global tech company. I felt that I had gotten the best of both worlds.
As an intern, I had a lot of autonomy and ownership over my work. My team and manager made me feel like an equal member of the team by trusting me and giving me the responsibility to do my best work. I learnt so much during my internship and cherish the wonderful people I got to work alongside.
Thanks to my wonderful and supportive team, awesome manager, buddy, mentors, and fellow interns. I wouldn’t have had such a successful internship without you all!
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