My Experience as a UX Design Intern at Shopify
This fall, I had the opportunity to intern at Shopify on the UX design team. These are my thoughts and takeaways as I’m finishing up my internship here.
Previously, I had worked with small teams of under 10 people, doing both front-end development and design work. This was my first internship as a full-on product designer, surrounded by a team of incredible designers at a 2000+ large company. I’ve never done something like this before, and I knew I had a lot to learn.
Understand the User
I was placed on the Shopify Capital team, a section of Shopify that offers cash advances to our merchants so they can get a head start on inventory, marketing, or anything else for their business needs. During my first week, I was tasked to gather and analyze support tickets that related to the project. At first, I was confused. How does this have anything to do with design? But as I dived deeper into the questions our merchants were asking and gathering the biggest pain points in our system, I understood what problems merchants were facing and started thinking about how our features and interface could potentially solve those problems.
When I started at Shopify, I was amazed by how deeply Shopifolk understand our users. We’re building a product that our merchants use on a daily basis — the platform that many of our merchants rely on for their livelihoods. That’s a huge responsibility, and so, with this in mind, user experience is heavily emphasized. It’s important to make sure the experience doesn’t disrupt a merchant’s workflow, keep in mind how the merchant could be feeling when completing a task, and in the end, making it easier for entrepreneurs to build a business.
Communication is Key
I found that much of a designer’s job involves communication. Articulating design decisions is essential, not only to other designers but also product managers, content strategists, and engineers.
Each week, we have “fresh eyes” — an informal meeting where a small group of us from UX (including designers, content strategists, and front-end developers) gather to present what each of us is working on and get feedback from people who we don’t necessarily work directly with. Even if I’m not looking for feedback in particular that week, I still found it incredibly valuable presenting my work, gaining new perspectives and ideas I hadn’t thought about.
We also have weekly design reviews — a more formal meeting around 40 minutes long with the directors of UX as another layer of feedback and support. It’s amazing how these lines of communication are built so transparently; getting critique from UX Shopifolk who know the product inside and out is highly accessible. Even Daniel, the co-founder of Shopify, was available to give feedback during my first design review!
I learned how to present my work — to first give context on the problem I’m trying to solve, the research and approaches I explored, the decisions I made, and finally the solution. It also helped to communicate what problems I faced and if there was any feedback in particular I was looking for. Critiques are an amazing way to improve one’s work, and allow someone else to give a fresh perspective on the project.
From a Merchant’s Perspective
Near the end of my internship, my partner and I launched our own Shopify store selling craft supply kits. The process was hard work but tons of fun, figuring out the business model, branding, site design, marketing, and finally shipping out our products! Working at Shopify and seeing the inside of a product versus using the product from a merchant perspective gave me so much more insight on understanding the variety of emotions our users feel — especially their struggles, excitements, anxieties, and achievements.
That’s a wrap
Thank you to the Shopify team for taking me under your wing; I grew so much as a designer and as a person. Thank you to my lead, Frédéric, for being so encouraging, Cassie and Dan for being the best pod-mates ever, and all the folks at Shopify who offered me their sincere support.
These past few months have been one of the best experiences of my life and I’m excited to take what I’ve learned here to my future endeavours!
