BizSmart Global—Camp BizSmart Internship
DATE June 2020 -August 2020 / Summer before 3rd year
During my internship with BizSmart, I guided and worked with teams of young adults to improve their product ideas and realize the ideas by creating renders and presentations. Each product idea came from the teams I worked with. My role as a designer was to guide their design decisions and transform written ideas into realistic images. Throughout this internship, I practiced quick ideation and CAD skills, as well as leadership and communication skills. I practiced talking about design with people who knew little about design and guiding them to make good design decisions.
Projects
Joule Case
Joule Case is a brand of portable power stations with stackable batteries. My team wanted to redesign it to look sleeker and look good enough to sit out in a modern home. They wanted it to include a control panel and app to operate it from inside the house or from the user’s phone. We also looked into different features for it, such as a detachable handle, silicone cover, and magnetic snapping system for stacking.
Learning Outcomes
This project was over the span of 1 week. I practiced my quick ideation, Photoshop, CAD, Keyshot rendering, and Adobe Indesign skills in order to visualize the idea and to create realistic renders and presentation boards for it. This project also allowed me to briefly explore simple app design for the control panel.
Poshmark
Poshmark is an online social platform and app to buy and sell fashion, home decor, beauty, etc. The team I worked with wanted to create a few physical products that would add to the user experience of interacting with clothing. They wanted to create a Poshmark branded clothes-folding robot, and colored closet dividers to help users better organize and keep track of their clothes. I designed the products to be aligned with the Poshmark brand, with friendly curves and color schemes that would easily fit into any home.
Learning Outcomes
From this project, I further learned how to quickly create a convincing CAD render in a short amount of time. I practiced explaining and guiding design decisions with people who did not understand design.
PSI Band
PSI Bands are wrist bands that use pressure points to reduce the nausea of the user for applications such as traveling in a vehicle. The team I worked with wanted to redesign the PSI band to look sleeker so that those in the professional world can wear them comfortably. They also wanted the device to perform additional functions such as vibrating pressure points to regulate BPM and a screen to monitor body conditions.
Learning Outcomes
For this project, I worked with a team located in Dubai. This allowed me to practice working with people who do not live in the same time zone and are from a different culture. I was able to communicate well with them and create a design that successfully communicated their ideas.
A Pandemic Internship
As I had this internship during the Summer of 2020, it was all remote. All communication was done through emails, virtual meetings, and messaging. The barrier of interacting virtually made it more difficult to talk more freely and effectively with the groups of people I was working with, but it also allowed us to work with those who we wouldn’t have been able to work with, otherwise. We were able to work together with people from other parts of the U.S., as well as from Dubai.