JOB TITLE UX Intern
DURATION 8 weeks
LOCATION InstaOffice Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Gurugram
TRIPTI GUPTA Master of Design | 2016-18
Industry Mentor:
Mr. Ankur Anand
Internal Mentor:
Mr. Mohammad Suhail
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FASHION TECHNOLOGY DELHI CENTRE
Preface
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s part of my Master of Design program at National Institute
of Fashion Technology, New Delhi Centre, I had chosen to attend an internship at InstaOffice Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd. For a period of 8 weeks starting from 1st June’17 till 31st July’17. The industrial training refers to work experience that is applicable to professional development. During this internship, I’ve learned the multidisciplinary in the field of User Experience and User Interface design. I would like to thank all the team of InstaOffice for their patience, motivation and inspiration as well as my teachers that have disseminated me their knowledge for making all of this possible.
PREFACE
Acknowledgement
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he internship opportunity I had with InstaOffice Business Solutions
Pvt. Ltd. for the duration of 8 weeks was a great chance for learning and professional development. Therefore, I consider myself fortuitous as I was given a chance to be part of them. I am very grateful for having an opportunity to meet so many amazing people and professionals who led me through this training internship. During the internship, I was supported and encouraged by my benefactors and therefore, I would like to convey my sincere thanks to them. My sincere thanks to National Institute of Fashion Technology and Ms. Kavita Yadav (Course Coordinator, PGDS department, NIFT Delhi) for giving me the chance to work in an industry for my professional growth. I would like to thank and show my deepest gratitude to Mr. Muhammad Suhail (Faculty Guide, NIFT Delhi) for his careful and valuable guidance which I treasured both theoretically and practically. Besides, I express my deepest thanks to Mr. Ankur Anand (Design and Tech Lead, InstaOffice Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd.) for giving me the opportunity and necessary guidance to work at their prestigious organization. My sincere thanks to all the staff members, merchants and employees of InstaOffice for their humble cooperation during my internship. I realize this opportunity as a big milestone in my career development. I will aim to use this knowledge and gained skills in the best possible way to attain desired career goal. Best Regards Tripti Gupta Master of Design National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi 1st August’17
Thanks for all the effort and contribution on this journey.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Objective •
To gain knowledge through real life experience in various areas of user experience while keeping the educational background in view.
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To understand the overall functioning of a UI/UX firm along with the roles and responsibilities of a UX designer in this setup.
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To work and deliver creatives as per the briefs and deadlines.
CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION
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CONTENTS
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THIS REPORT CONTAINS A COLLECTION OF PROJECTS THAT I HAVE WORKED ON DURING MY INTERNSHIP AT INSTAOFFICE AND ALSO THE DAY-TO-DAY EXPERIENCES THAT I HAVE BEEN LIVING SINCE ITS BEGINNING. In the first part I will tell more about the office, the team, my industry mentor and the clients at InstaOffice. The job role, my key responsibilities and my part in the design team while my stay at the industry are highlighted. In the following part, there is an introduction to the projects, my contribution to the final product and a conclusion of what I have learned. The final part consists of the feedback of this internship and an evaluation of the results obtained taking in consideration my initial expectations. The document ends with a write-up about my overall experience at InstaOffice which is a live blogpost at the industry website.
INTRODUCTION
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INSTAOFFICE BUSINESS SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. IS INDIA’S FASTEST GROWING NETWORK OF SERVICED OFFICE SPACES INCLUDING CO-WORKING SPACES, BUSINESS CENTRES, MEETING ROOMS AND EVENT SPACES. THEY PROVIDE END-TO-END OFFICE SPACE SOLUTIONS FOR TEAMS OF ANY SIZE AND FOR ANY DURATION. InstaOffice users range from divisions of MNCs, growing start-ups, distribution teams of large corporations, independent professionals, SMEs and freelancers, amongst others. InstaOffices are designed to provide distraction-free, productive office environments for office space seekers. The spaces also offer conference and meeting rooms. Along with shared resources, the users can look forward to support services like secretarial/legal/accounting support, helping organizations and individuals stay focused on their core business. InstaOffice is a well-funded start-up, investors include US based institutional investors, industry experts, professional investors and some senior entrepreneurs.
ABOUT INSTAOFFICE
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Clients
InstaOffice is a community of over 500 members ranging from early start-ups to mobile professionals and large, mature corporations. Their members range from tech geeks to investment bankers, from freelancers and SMEs to large scale MNCs like Yahoo, Amazon, Staples amongst many others! Our community also includes influential investors and industry experts.
“We love the feel of the space. It's corporate and formal, yet relaxed at the same time.”
Raghav Verma
Co-founder, Chaayos
“We are able to drive our recruitment process in a friendly environment at InstaOffice. We would like to use this facility in the future as well.”
Abhay Kapoor
HR Lead, Amazon
“The team at InstaOffice is more approachable and quick at work. It is more flexible than some world-renowned shared spaces I have worked with in the past.”
Rajni Rajan
Founder, Kraftbuy
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The Team
At InstaOffice, it's always a beautiful day to build things. The employees have built a company they love working for. It takes an entire team to be behind something big. Together, they work hard, they laugh a lot, they brainstorm nonstop, use hundreds of post-its a week, and strive to keep their offices happy.
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Organisational Structure
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KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES OF THE ROLE: •
Thinking creatively to produce new ideas and concepts and developing interactive design for InstaOffice website
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Prepare rough drafts and present the ideas
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Using innovation to redefine a design brief within the constraints of cost and time
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Amend final designs to comments and gain full approval
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Working with a range of media and keeping up to date with emerging technologies
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Proofreading to produce accurate and high-quality work
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Demonstrating illustrative skills with rough sketches and working on layouts ready for print
UX INTERN
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uring the period of my internship, I worked on many projects in
different phases. Within this section I will focus on the main assignments I was involved in and also give an impression about the other minor projects I did.
PROJECTS
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Realisation A solid goal for every student in college is to get an internship. Experience, money, and need to look smart among your friends and peers are all legitimate reasons and concerns. Being a graduate student from National Institute of Fashion Technology, my skill set was befitting for the role I had applied for (the reason I was hired as a UX intern :P). But I was unexplored to what was happening in the real world, how my design and thought process can actually be used to make things happen and how design nuances can change the game. My first day at InstaOffice was not even close to what I had expected. Like every intern would expect to meet new people, be friends with them and not work for at least the first week of internship (after all we are interns and expecting a little pampering and spoon-feeding doesn’t harm :P), I had the presumption in mind and was looking forward for all the attention that I would get. I met Ankur ( Design and Tech Lead and my reporting manager)
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on 1st June’17 at 10:30 AM and at 10:35 AM (10:33 AM to be precise!), I was given a list of tasks to be completed by EOD. He asked me to update on a few of them within 2 hours. I was asked to join all the team groups that existed and not to forget the most important task of the day was to fill the ice breaker form. I struggled hard to actually understand what was going on. The first day was not as easy as it seemed. But as the days passed by, I got to know the people and discern the work culture here, I started loving the place and my work. I was a fresher to the startup culture, where everyone is a hustler trying to meet the targets and brainstorming to make things happen. Instaoffice is a happy family of unique yet multi-talented engineers, managers, and designers and one of the happiest and crazy startups in India on a mission to provide happy offices to everyone. I never made it to office on time. Never. Reaching on time wasn’t the first priority, but coming out with good design solutions was.
Nobody cared much about what you wore or how well you were groomed. It was just necessary to complete the task. Here you are the owner of the tasks given to you. You are looked upon like a regular employee of the team, interns are not given any special treatment. For me, as an intern, I was never given a task that was urgent because the main aim was what I gain after 2 months. Before assigning any task, Ankur asked me if I would like to take it up or not rather than forcing the task onto me. The nature of the work was extremely open-ended. I was not responsible for doing and completing just one task but I had the opportunity to take up small projects that were diverse in nature. I began my internship thinking that I would be solely responsible for managing and designing the UI for InstaOffice website but being a part of varied tasks was an enormous learning experience for me. Building things from scratch to the final product was truly a great growing experience. Starting from the UX analysis of competitor websites to setting up mixpanel and google analytics to track the daily metrics, to viewing and observing the live recordings
on hotjar, to understand user behaviour and accordingly designing new elements for website was a brand-new exposure to user experience that I was unfamiliar to. During the course of my 2 month internship, I also designed the InstaOffice playbook that talks about the happy place that InstaOffice is because of its people and culture. I was extremely fortunate to have exposure to such a diverse spread of work, and I’m really grateful to my colleagues for mentoring and helping me whenever I got stuck. Ankur is honestly the greatest, most diligent boss you can work with. While it’s definitely not for everyone, working at a startup is an incredible experience that I’d suggest you consider having. And it is not the perks of being here that made my 2 month internship momentous but the people and the culture that made me feel like quitting college and wanting to work here forever. I’d strongly recommend anyone reading this to see if you fit into any of the roles open at InstaOffice. It has never been better. At InstaOffice it is always a beautiful day to build things, indeed.
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My experience at InstaOffice has been a very positive one! The work ethics here have been incredibly motivating and has given me an insight into the industry, the company and what I would want to pursue in future. The people here involved me in their meetings, design work and included me as a fellow employee. I learnt a lot in my time at InstaOffice. This would be from the basics of how office life works and commuting, creating designs that will be live on the website, graphics that will be used for marketing, and running of the business. I have come a long way with my UX designing skills, from knowing the bare basics to being able to create full on user interfaces and web elements. I have learnt the UX metrics, have a hands-on mixpanel and google analytics now, previously I was unfamiliar to, and learnt to do UX analysis of websites. I know what exact information is needed and relevant. I have also learnt a lot about how the business is run and what goes into creating a good user experience. It is not just creating a beautiful and pretty user interface. It is understanding the user, working with different technologies, A/B
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testing, feedback, finding out the reason behind drop-offs, generating hypothesis for user behavior and designing the end product. InstaOffice helped by firstly giving me this opportunity and secondly offering me paid work for my period of internship. Not only that, they asked me when I graduate in hope that they are able to offer me full time work when that time comes around. In that sense, they have helped me figure out what I want to do in the near future and possibly the far future. I have a reignited love for design after completing my internship there. I discovered that you cannot be a good UX person if you only focus on being a fine and well-versed UX designer on the very first day of your job. It takes a lot of time, effort and knowledge of varied design fields, technology, marketing to deliver a good user experience in the end. As a company I admired, they lived up to the expectation and have made me keen to work for a company I love; if it be them or another company in the future. That was because I enjoyed what I was creating as well as the environment I was in.
PERSONAL FORECAST
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Clean design, good user experience, multidisciplinarity and collaboration were definitions that I could experience during the twomonth of this internship. Moreover, I was very glad to have the opportunity to deal with all the
stages of a project and to be a part of this office. I felt like at home within InstaOffice and I will take a part of it with me for my upcoming career.
Thanks to all the people who made this experience possible‌
EPILOGUE
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www.instaoffice.in