Experiencing Product User Research and Project Management

<aside> 💻 All work is under NDA, so I cannot share much about what I specifically worked on, but this page is more talking about an overview of my experience and some lessons I learned while participating in this internship.

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👥 Role

Research Intern

⌛ Duration

April 2020 - July 2020

Overview

April 2020 began the start of my first internship at Webtoon Entertainment as a Research Intern for the cross-functional PRM team. As a Research Intern, I was in charge of conducting quantitative data research through data collection and data organization. I synthesized and analyzed user trends through the data research I did by interpreting what the data was saying about user behaviors in the application. I also had the chance to delve into some project management by designing and creating a system that helped streamline many different workflows in the team into one overall system.

Lessons and Takeaways

1. Engage in a learning mindset. Since this was my first internship, I came in with the mindset that I needed to get everything right and be able to adjust to the work environment in one day. However, I quickly realized my initial thoughts were all false, and I should use the first few weeks to make my mistakes and adjust slowly until I feel more comfortable with the work I do. The team and the mentors were there to help me out since they were all in the same boat as me at one point in their career.
2. Communication is always key. This is probably one of the main takeaways I got leaving this internship as I learned this is something I still need to continue working on. Since this internship was virtually remote, communication was especially key for our team when it came to explaining to the rest of the team what work we have on our hands and what our work means and how it helps contribute to our company goals. It was important that our team was on the same page because my work relied on other interns' work as well. Additionally, I learned to communicate with my mentor more when I needed help with certain features I wanted to use or if they sent me a resource, then I communicate that I have taken the time to read it and talk about it with them about how this can better improve our research.
3. Challenge yourself to go beyond your own expectations. Sometimes, there were tasks assigned to me that were beyond my own skill set and that I personally couldn't do. At first, I had the mindset that I shouldn't perform these tasks and let others do the work only because I was afraid of messing up and having the pressure on me for affecting business needs. However, with the help of my mentor, I was able to exceed my own expectations of myself by challenging myself and learning new skills relating to data research. For example, I had no experience with Google Analytics and Javascript, but I took my own time learning new skills for these two tools and was able to better myself in my role.
4. I like working with products and user research. Coming in, I was not exactly sure what type of work I wanted to work in post-grad since I came to the conclusion that software engineering wasn't the path for me. From working in a team focused on the many aspects of product management (product user research, product design, etc), I really liked the work I was doing and what my other team members were doing to help a product grow and to understand how users utilize the product was very intriguing to me. I liked my experience a lot because I can directly see the impact I can make through technology, which was always my goal when pursuing any career path. To add on to that, I enjoyed how this gave me a chance to understand human behaviors and create better user experiences, which was also one of my interests, but I didn't know how that really fit in the tech industry until I had the opportunity to experience this internship.

Thank You

To close this off, I want to say thank you to my mentor, my supervisor, my team, and to Webtoon Entertainment for giving me the opportunity to experience working in a professional environment and a cross-functional product management team. I am grateful for all of the professional development and learnings I was able to take away from this internship. At first, I thought I would simply be doing some data collection and other assistant work. But instead, I had the chance to explore the many aspects of a product — strategy, design, research, and more. I'm still starting out on my career journey into UX/Product design and UX research, but I am more excited to see where I will take myself to new opportunities.