2018 Internship: Asurion UX Design Intern
I got the amazing opportunity in the summer of 2018 to work as a UX design intern under the company Asurion. While Asurion is primarily a technology insurance company, I got to work on a small team working to expand their company into different fields. My team was working in creating a new product, Luminary, which bridges the technology gap between today's generation and the elderly. Luminary is essentially a tablet with a very simplified interface for the elderly to be able to navigate through and communicate with their family easily. During my time at Asurion, the product was not yet launched, so I got the great opportunity to contribute to this project as it was preparing for its launch in a couple of months. As an intern, I worked with the Product Manager intern as well as an Engineer intern to identify a user flow that could be improved and to revamp it.
My Role
UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher
Team
Product Management Intern, Engineer Intern
Timeline
June 2018 - August 2018
Tools
Sketch, Invision, Zeplin, Pen and Paper
Identifying the Problem
In order to identify which user flow needed the most, I first mapped out all the user flows. Using Sketch, I created diagrams of each possible user flow of the tablet and mapped out any issues that I or other users could poten
After discussing with the PM and Engineer interns, we settled to focus on improving the user flow for inviting others into a family circle. Through the process of deciding this, we considered many factors including our limiting time and engineering efforts. Even at this stage, we encountered road bumps, including at first, choosing a user flow that might not as directly move metrics or result in any changes in the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
Brainstorming Solutions
Before actually going into Sketch and designing the new user interface for the invitation flow, we first had to brainstorm different solutions we could take. This was not simply just my job, but also the engineer and product manager interns. Asurion operates on something called Journey Teams, which is where teams are grouped to have several designers, engineers and one or two PM's in a group, rather than isolating designers to themselves and engineers themselves. These groups worked on one specific KPI and was in charge of several goals around that KPI. As interns, we formed a small Journey Team ourselves and focused on the user invite flow KPI. As the designer, I lead these brainstorm sessions and making sure that these ideas are also user friendly. We gathered together and each brainstormed several ideas and included small sketches of each.
We sorted these ideas into a 2 dimensional graph that indicates the impact and frequency of each idea. In the end, we decided on the idea of customizing invites so that they are more friendly upon retrieval, making it easier to accept the invite rather than just ignoring it. We believed that this was impactful as we concluded that the higher family circle each elder had, the more interactions there were on the app in both the family side and the elder's side.
Redesigning the Invitation User Flow
When it came to designing the actual experience, I created mockups of what the interactions would be like. At the time, the current platform family members would have used to interact with their elders on Luminary was through a Facebook Messenger bot. I recreated those interactions on Sketch and redesigned them so it fit our solution. I also prototyped them on Invision so that it was a clickable prototype that people could walk through for testing.
Testing and Results
After the clickable prototypes were created, I launched it for user testing on usertesting.com with the help of my mentor. I set it up so that users could go through the whole process and give feedback on whether they would take the time to upload a photo and if it was understandable. The results showed that although there were minor confusions, the message of what we wanted the users to get out of this was clear. After making minor changes, I handed off the designs to the engineer intern to implement this step into the actual user flow for when users register their accounts. Throughout this whole process, I worked with my manager closely, reporting to her my progress and asking for help when needed. At the end of my internship, I presented my work to all the designers. You can find the presentation here.
Takeaways
Throughout this internship, I learned a lot professionally and personally. Coming into this internship, I did not know much about UX design other than what I have read through articles online. I did not know any of the hard skills needed as a UX designer other than the Adobe Creative programs. This internship not only allowed me to get comfortable with tools such as Sketch and Invision, but also other processes of UX design such as researching and testing. I got opportunities to call users and ask them directly what they enjoyed and disliked about the product and implement changes accordingly. I also got opportunities to give feedback to other designers working on different projects as well as lead my own feedback session. Personally, I got to work on developing my own strengths and weaknesses. Because of the extremely friendly and environment in the office, I became more comfortable in asking for help when I needed it and talking to those in much higher position. Just as important, I got to practice leading a group in certain aspects and taking in feedback and new ideas. This internship with Asurion was very memorable and impactful as it helped me understand that I truly do love UX design.
