Design Engineering
Showcase 2021

ELSE London

Tags
UX/UI
Consulting

Project Details

Student
Jack Polturak
Team
Interaction Design
Supervisor
Dr Eva-Maria Kirchberger
Role
Interaction Design Intern
Sector
Consultancies
Links
Portfolio
Email

As an Interaction Design Intern at ELSE I have been able to make myself a valuable and autonomous team member across multiple disciplines: client design work, R&D and marketing. I have learnt a lot about how client relationships affect design direction in the context of agency environments, this was my main objective when applying to ELSE. Unexpectedly, the most valuable knowledge I have gained in this experience is how to optimise the effectiveness of feedback loops. I feel this is due to the creative and implicit nature of the work that is so reliant on opinion and discussion.

ELSE Design

Demonstration of Design Engineering Thinking and Skills

Having had many experiences utilising and following design processes for university projects, this internship was a great opportunity learn the nature of these processes at an industry level. I found that when working in a team for stakeholders and clients, the design direction of a given project may change unexpectedly, and that this requires you to be agile and versatile with your skillsets. I’ve also learnt that during critical times (when client delivery is fast approaching) your capacity and talent may be delegated to unexpected tasks that fall outside your knowledge poll– this requires you to be open minded and have a positive mindset about learning new skills on the job.

Having worked consistently on the O2 Priority Platform, I was exposed to many different interaction and experience design frameworks that are used to align user/customer behaviours with O2 business model objectives. I was able to learn how to apply key performance indicators (KPIs) to these objectives in order to create development roadmap plans that both ELSE and O2 would use to delegate their capacity and talent.

Role and Contributions

From a high-level perspective, my contributions and achievements can be categorised across the following:

1. Client Work

I was placed on working for O2 Priority’s app and website. Priority is O2’s reward scheme for their customers and aims to increase customer loyalties by providing offers from high street brands and experiences. I was an interaction design intern, where I worked closely with clients in developing user interface designs for their design backlog, however, my specific contributions were not restricted to this field and were more about applying my capacity to where my team needed it most at critical times.

I was able to contribute towards the new “design direction” of O2 Priory by researching and producing different style, features and effects to that I felt would give the app a more premium and modern feel. I was proud to see different aspects of my work featuring in client delivery files – that will eventually be published live.

I was also able to utilize my video editing skills in creating a “Product video” that was used internally and presented to senior board members at O2. This showcased the work ELSE had been doing since the beginning of their contract. Feedback from the client stated that this “went down a storm” and created a very clear narrative of the design roadmap and how that tied to O2 business objectives.

Once I had established skills in video editing and animation production, I was able design the new O2 Priority Splash screen (the short animation that plays after launching an application and before the homepage is displayed). During this process I was able to work directly with the O2 Priority Product Owner in reviewing design options and gaining feedback.

o2 priority
o2 priority animation

2. Research and development:

ELSE afford themselves the luxury of working a 4-day client week, in order to allow time for R&D projects as well as self-investment. I worked on a project that was developing a DSC (Design System Configurator). Advanced design systems require a large number of resources and a senior level of talent to develop, maintain and optimise. This is due to the large number of inter-dependencies and rules that design system’s follow – Hence the purpose of this project is to find an automated solution or “configurator”. I onboarded this project during the data-collection phase and was able use my skills in HTML and CSS to collect various design system tokens and variables from a variation of different well-established brands.

leica camera

3. Marketing:

During the earlier, onboarding stages of my internships (to which I was not able to be autonomous in client work) I had the capacity to contribute towards ELSE’s own marketing department. These jobs consisted of creating social media assets that: 1. advertised ELSE’s product range to increase client acquisition. And 2. Advertised job vacancies to draw in new talent and resourcing.

marketing campaign

Summary

During my time at ELSE, I have been able to:

1. Gain experience with client relationships and designing for stakeholders.

2. Develop a greater understanding of UI/UX design frameworks that are used industry.

3. Enhance my general graphic design skills.

4. Enhance my animation and video editing skills.

Having had no previous industry experience with UI/UX design, this internship was certainly a steep leaning curve. However, having an impact on such a current and popular service was incredibly rewarding.