Name: Jatin Chhikara
Internship, Co-op or Research Site: Mozilla Corporation
Position Title: User Experience Design Engineer
Major(s)/Minor(s): Human-Centered Computing (Master's)
Expected Graduation Year: May 2016
Briefly describe your internship, co-op, or research opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.
My major responsibilities included: making new concepts that involve user centric design in prototyping for the Firefox desktop, and conducting user studies to check the new design concepts by making and testing user plans for the prototypes. In addition to this, I was also involved in user research for the Firefox desktop; my goal was to understand how users perceive and use Firefox in their daily life.
Describe the process of obtaining your internship, research, or co-op opportunity.
Mozilla was the first company where I applied for an internship at the end of last October. I found out about the internship program online through Mozilla's career website. Classes which I had that semester were directly related to the interview, so they helped me in preparation. I also watched lot of interviews of established icons, like Don Norman, related to UX domain to prepare.
What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?
The most exciting part of this internship was making a positive impact on millions of people all around the globe through my work. I have been given the responsibility to lead a project which is a great learning process. I am learning user centered design methodologies for making new concepts into reality from a UX point of view. The UX team for Firefox is geographically scattered all over the world, so daily communication (using different tools such as Vidyo and IRC) and weekly meetings helped me understand the dynamics of working with a geographically-dispersed team.
How do you believe you have made an impact through your work?
Three projects that I worked on will be implemented in the new version on Firefox in the future. This internship has given me opportunity to provide good user experience to millions of Firefox-users scattered around the globe. I am able to break all the barriers of countries and cultures by contributing to a product that is same for everyone. It has also helped me align my academic experience with the practical industry work from an engineer and designer's point of view.
What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?
The first piece of advice I would give is to start applying early as giant like Mozilla, Google, Facebook, etc. start hiring interns around November. I would suggest that know yourself well in terms of what knowledge, interests, and passions you have. Focus on what you want and give your all to that. A good online portfolio is a good way to share your existing projects and interests to the hiring manager. Seeking help from alumni and the Career Center will provide you with lot of opportunities to build network.
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