Google — Interaction Design Intern

Google has been ranked the Best Company to Work For for the sixth consecutive year by Fortune. The company has grown many times over the past year. Further, they have a history of hiring UX/Interaction Design interns for a vast variety of projects ranging from Daydream (VR platform) to Project Sunroof (analyze solar saving potential). During my interview, it appeared that Google valued the following characteristics —

#1 Curiosity To Learn

Stay updated with the design world

User Experience Design is a young and dynamic field that is constantly redefining itself. Design teams from well-known companies and individuals are constantly contributing to the design community, experimenting with and standardizing new design patterns. I feel young designers have to and should make every effort to stay abreast with the recent growth in the design industry. From my experience so far, knowledge learned from school is research-oriented and restricted to the courses. Dedicating weekly exploration times to know what the design world has for you has proven really helpful for me.

I personally find the following resources very helpful:

Work with designers/developers from different backgrounds

UX Design is a field where you will find people from very different backgrounds. Let’s take my MS-HCI cohort for example — we have students from Computer Science, Data Science, Psychology, Marketing, Industrial Design, Literature Media, Animation, Graphic Design, and more. Being a team player and learning to listen then becomes a key differentiator between a successful UX designer and an ordinary one. Being HCI students, we have an opportunity to work with talented students from different domains, and this opportunity should not be missed. The more you work with people from different backgrounds, the more you are exposed to different perspectives, and that path leads to only one result- A Better UX Designer.

How do I achieve this?

Take classes that are cross-listed with other majors in school and include a semester long group project . This will give you an opportunity to work with undergraduate and graduate students from different majors having a completely different perspective on the project.

. This will give you an opportunity to work with undergraduate and graduate students from different majors having a completely different perspective on the project. Wing some hackathons! I understand that most participants come with a predetermined team, partnering with the teammates they are comfortable working with or trust their expertise in specific domains. However, I would suggest, at least one time, go with the intention to explore and experience the unknown! Form a team at the event, on-the-go, with members you have never met before. In this process, you will learn to trust unknown people, communicate effectively and work together to solve a problem. Try it once and share your experience in comments section.

Interview questions to prepare for:

What is the latest design trend that you found intriguing? Why do you think it is popular? How does it impact user experience? If given the chance, how will you tweak it to make it better?

How do you stay updated with latest design trends and design news? What do you learn from them? How do you apply that to your daily design process and approach?

While working on [a project from your portfolio], which tools did you learn on the go that helped you design better? How does that tool differ from other tools in the industry?

#2 Digest Design Criticism

Why is this important?

Google is a huge organization with more than 72k employees. Based on the information shared by my acquaintances working at Google, they have a very open feedback culture where anyone is free to share their perspective on what other teams are working on. The interviewers are interested in knowing how you react to critiques or feedback shared with you on your designs. This is a critical heuristic to make sure you are a right culture fit for Google.

Get comfortable with design critiques

Google stresses a lot on effective teamwork. With project Google Aristotle, they spent two years performing extensive research to understand what a perfect team looks like. The top key to build a perfect team was Psychological Safety- team members should be comfortable taking risks and speaking their mind. This also means you should be open to criticism and consider it as a constant part of your design process. I love the following tweet by Adam Connor:

Critique is at the core of collaboration… Critique is not a design skill. Critique is a life skill. — Adam Connor, Designer at MadPow

An increasing number of design teams across industry are incorporating critique sessions as a part of their design process. It is invaluable to be able to critique others’ designs, as well as digest and embrace the critiques of your own. It is an important skill to practice.

Interview questions to prepare for:

Were there any difficulties you encountered in your team while working on [a project from your portfolio]? What was the difficulty? What did you and your team members do in that situation? How did the situation end?

Imagine you are working at Google, and an employee come and tell you to change the color of the button to yellow? What will you do in that situation?

What approach do you use to get feedback on your designs? How do you analyze the feedback received? How do you incorporate that into your designs?

Optional reading: Application process for Google UX internships