Kohler Co
UX Internship/Co-op
Evaluated usability, created and execute tests, conducted competitive analyses, created websites, won competitions, and more
TIME PERIOD
6 months (July 2021 - December 2021)
RESPONSIBILITIES
UX + UI Designer, Competitive Analysis, User Testing, Presentations
TEAM
Human Experience Team
WHAT I DID
CONDUCTED IN-DEPTH RESEARCH
One of the first projects I had; pertained specifically with regards to these products’ functionality and controls.
My work with these types of products consisted of conducting competitive analyses, developing ways to improve cross-category consistency, and proposing new designs.
DESIGNING AN INTERNAL WEBPAGE
Responsible for creating an icon library within the company’s Sharepoint site for other Kohler employees
Also features guidelines for new icon creation.
DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING USER STUDIES
As our clientele would come from different departments within Kohler - most notably the Industrial Design team or the Marketing team - we would specifically design the studies to cater to their needs and the questions they seek to have answered. For these studies, we conducted…
A/B Testing: for one product line, we wanted to see which design that the designers came up with would be more comfortable to use.
Competitive Analysis: for another product line, we wanted to see how other companies were doing with their similar products. We thus tested out those companies’ products with users, asked for their opinions on various aspects of those products (i.e., how easy these products are to figure out, overall satisfaction, etc.), and finally, asked them how they would expect a low-fidelity prototype of Kohler’s product to work.
Studies on Overall User Satisfaction: for another product line, we sought to determine the product’s acceptability among potential users.
Upon completing the user studies, with the help of my supervisor, I would create a presentation for our findings that summarizes:
how we conducted the study,
the number of participants we recruited and their demographics,
our findings,
our recommendations
I would then present these findings to the team that needed the study to be done.
PROPOSED NEW DIGITAL PRODUCT IDEAS TO MANAGEMENT
In addition to being a part of the Human Experience team, I was also part of a team that competed in Kohler’s I-Prize competition. The I-Prize competition consists of Kohler associates proposing innovations for the company to implement in the future. In our team, I was the main UI/UX designer, and thus my responsibility was to come up with how the app for our proposed product would operate. For this, I drew several example screens of the app, as well as a storyboard to show the judges how the user would interact with the app.
I also helped design the slide deck we used during our presentation and was one of two team members for our team who presented to a group of over 200 people, one of whom is the senior vice president, and another the president and chief executive officer.
As a result of our effort, our project ended up winning the title “most creative presentation” and was awarded $100k for the project to be developed.
WHAT I LEARNED
Gained more experience in working with different teams, be it marketing, engineering, or industrial design; I also learned more about dealing with the intricacies involved in managing different expectations from different parties.
Learned different ways of looking at problems, and the importance of, when testing a product, going above and beyond in finding out new variables and questions to be answered.
My responsibility involved working on multiple projects concurrently, oftentimes with overlapping deadlines. This experience honed my skills in effective project prioritization
I’d like to thank the Human Experience team - Nancy Liu, Doug Palmer, Barry Glasford, Greta Knowles, and Jocelyn Jia - for being so helpful and supportive to me during my time at this internship. I’d also like to thank Delia Mixon, Kathryn Bancks, and Shane Allis for being such wonderful team members for the I-Prize competition.