Before starting my 6-week internship at Vivoom, I was quite anxious about entering the startup culture, particularly because I was unsure of my exact responsibilities as an intern. I had never worked in the startup environment or been exposed to the laissez-faire operational style, so I did not know what to expect at Vivoom. Furthermore, this was their first year of running a summer internship program, so they were trying to figure out how to effectively manage an intern program as we were trying to acclimate ourselves to the company and internship.

Before starting my 6-week internship at Vivoom, I was quite anxious about entering the startup culture, particularly because I was unsure of my exact responsibilities as an intern. I had never worked in the startup environment or been exposed to the laissez-faire operational style, so I did not know what to expect at Vivoom. Furthermore, this was their first year of running a summer internship program, so they were trying to figure out how to effectively manage an intern program as we were trying to acclimate ourselves to the company and internship.

Within the first week, I had the opportunity to talk to everyone on the Vivoom team and had already started working on my main projects. On the first day, my supervisor made sure the transition was smooth and gave me enough time to familiarize myself with the team members and the pertinent programs. She clearly outlined the five major projects I would be responsible for during my internship, which included two product design projects, one brainstorming project, one research project, and a final project.

At first, the projects seemed daunting given the short amount of time, but the “intern FAQs” sheet and Ava’s objective-timeline-deliverables sheet for each project reassured me that it was possible. Before the end of the week, I began working on a project to redesign the user interface and user experience on the desktop and mobile sites. I worked closely with the tech team to document the current user flow, highlight areas for improvement, and develop mock-ups of a redesigned UI. I immediately got to work sketching my vision for the UI and user flows, but I found it difficult to effectively communicate my ideas to the tech team. In addition, many aspects of my design were unfeasible for the tech team to implement, so I have a long way to go before finding a feasible design for the UI.

Despite the uncertainty going into the internship, it got off to a great start and I have really enjoyed my experience getting to know the Vivoom team.