In 2020, Forum One moved its annual in-office summer internship program 100% virtual. I took on the task of ensuring our incoming designers had a meaningful and engaging internship experience in 2020 and beyond.

Completed at Forum One, 2020–2021 | Lead Program Manager

Background and Context

Problem Statements

• How might we develop a program that can scale for future internships, both remote and virtual?

• How might we plan for a summer heavy on client work, but that might also be light?

• How might we adjust our plans as needed during the internship?

• How might we keep our interns fully engaged in a remote environment?

• How might we gather regular feedback from key partners?

• How might we incorporate feedback to improve future programs?

• How might we share successes and improvement opportunities with other services?

Designing the 2020 Program

Discovery

We held interviews with former interns now employed at Forum One for their thoughts and ideas on how the best parts of their experience could be translated to a remote internship. What we heard most was that former interns wanted better structure, communication, and help being prepared for interviews.

Design

We decided to develop a weekly “curriculum” schedule that would provide structure, build skills, and provide “real-life” advice for the interns. If successful, this plan would give interns a solid understanding of the design process at Forum One, as well as a set of important design skills, and a long list of resources to reference in the future.

Provide structure

We structured the seven weeks of the program to follow the design process of Discovery, Design, and Delivery, with time for Career Development at the end. This helped them understand how design works at Forum One, and ideally would come with an associated project or task.

Build skills

We mapped skills (i.e. collaboration, feedback) to each week and gave the interns a list of resources related to the phase and skill. This gave them research and reading to do in their downtime between shadowing meetings and other tasks.

Provide “Real-life” advice

Each week, we scheduled a one-hour AMA panel discussions with designers and other Forum One SMEs to share expertise and allow the interns to ask questions about the focus for that week.

Launch

In Summer 2020, two students specializing in UX Design joined Forum One for a shortened seven week remote internship. They were extremely talented designers, and were interested in meeting with as many Forum One staff and shadowing as many client/project meetings as possible.

They met daily with their mentors, and I met with both interns at the mid- and end-point of their internship to gather feedback about their experience.

Using the feedback from the mid-point interview, we were able to pivot the second half of the internship to give the designers opportunities to practice presenting their work—something that both of them mentioned in their feedback.

We ended the internship with a mock-interview and portfolio review with senior design leadership as well as career advice to set them up for success as they left Forum One.

Retrospective

Involved parties (myself, mentors, buddies) performed a retrospective shortly after the internship concluded.

We combined this information with the direct feedback from the interns to develop a set of action items and iterations for 2021:

• Build out the schedule to fill two more weeks

• Design more internal work to do, build out set agendas

• Define seed questions for the weekly design discussions

The 2021 Program

In Summer 2021, one UX Design student and one UI Design student joined Forum One for a nine week remote internship. Again, both were extremely talented designers, eager to jump in and complete real tasks and contribute to the team’s work.

We continued the weekly design discussions and again ended the internship with mock interviews and career advice—though this time shared this session with the entire intern class.

One size doesn’t fit all

These two interns were stellar, but very different from the two designers we had in Summer 2020. They were less interested in shadowing and wanted more opportunities to do design work. Fortunately, there was a lot more client work ongoing and less need for downtime and internal tasks.

Feedback from the mid-point check-ins confirmed our plans needed to be adjusted. The interns wanted more client work and fewer meetings—amongst other small changes. We were able to pull them off of projects where they were just observing to spend more time collaborating with designers on ongoing projects where they could contribute.

Retrospective & Future Plans

After the program, involved parties (myself, mentors, buddies) performed another retrospective and planned out iterations for 2022. I outlined a plan with changes for the team to implement, including:

• Revising the curriculum format

• Scheduling more informational interviews

• Adjusting balance of shadowing and project work

• Developing “pre-work” for weekly discussions

• Developing a “mock” project

Impact

In addition to the clear benefits to all four interns, the work we did creating the program had other benefits:

Onboarding materials

We developed a lengthy “welcome” document for the interns that included important information about the team, expectations, typical work functions, and resources. Not only is this format now used by other departments for their internships—it has ended up influencing a new onboarding process for the Design Team overall.

Career advice from Forum One

I developed a “career advice from Forum One” presentation that was shared with the entire 2021 intern class. This included quotes and career advice I gathered from staff across the company, as well as pointers for interviews and job applications. Senior company leadership also attended this “panel” discussion and it was incredibly well received by the interns! A recording of this session can be viewed here.