Summary

During my internship at Dropbox, I collaborated with my Product, Engineering, Content Design, and UX Research partners to integrate DocSend's most valuable features into Dropbox's core product to advance towards the company's strategy. From my beginning research phase all the way to conducting usability tests and handing off the designs, I thought through feature prioritization and evaluated moments to make the experience more intuitive and inviting.

Learnings & Takeaways

It felt that I was learning something new each day! I tried to distill some of my biggest takeaways into the following:

( 1 ) Establishing a North Star at the beginning was key in accelerating the design decision-making process and initiating a design direction. My guiding question was, "How can I simplify these complex features into something intuitive and inviting for users?" This helped me narrow my focus from the various explorations I had and cultivate a more delightful experience.

( 2 ) Design feedback is helpful, but pointed feedback will help you go the distance! Through my participation in design critiques, I honed my ability to express the specific kind of feedback I needed based on the project's stage. Moreover, I learned how to provide pointed, contextual information to reviewers, which enabled them to fully understand both the problem space at hand and the solutions I was proposing.

( 3 ) Creating buy-in by learning to speak my stakeholders’ languages. When navigating my cross-functional collaborations, I framed my designs to resonate with my PM and Engineering partners’ workflows. This approach allowed me to cultivate deeper understanding and kept the communication lines open while staying true to my user-centric focus.

( 4 ) Getting more comfortable with using a design system. During this internship, I had the opportunity to sharpen my craft with learning to utilize Dropbox's expanding, mature design system. It was a fun challenge to work within the guidelines of each component and exploring which components would best fit the design need.

Thank you

A special thank you goes to Elizabeth Zhu, my design mentor, for always giving the best advice, fielding my never-ending list of questions, and sending the best Slack GIFs! I had the best internship experience and learned so much because of your guidance! More big thank you's to the DocSend GEAR and the DocSend-FormSwift Design teams for taking me under your wing, showing me the ropes, and making this a summer for the books! 🖤

Absolutely adore the good friends I made along the way!