Job Description

Role summary:

IDEO helps companies innovate. We design products, services, environments, and digital experiences for organizations seeking new ways to provide value to their customers. IDEO creates visible and tangible strategies for innovation and executes all aspects of design and development, from conception through production.

Design Interns work collaboratively, creatively, and flexibly within interdisciplinary teams and with our clients. Being a designer at IDEO means you do a lot of listening, observing, brainstorming and iterating with a group of people with backgrounds very different than yours. This diversity of thought and approach results in breakthrough ideas that lead to innovative outcomes.

IDEO's human-centered design process involves careful observations of people; gathering insights from those observations and other creative perspectives; exploring and defining design opportunities; helping to define strategy; creating tangible design expressions, and communicating the essence of these ideas.

The ideal candidate has strong visualization and prototyping skills in addition to being comfortable working within multidisciplinary teams. Candidates should demonstrate an ability to work across a range of projects, from product interaction to software tools and native mobile or responsive web applications. Prototyping and production skills are essential, as well as a passion for design and a point of view about your work. Please indicate your specific roles and contributions for each project submitted as part of the portfolio.

Something about you:

• You’re great at turning human behavior and needs into real concepts
• You are obsessed with what design and technology could do for people
• You understand basic human-centered design philosophy, are comfortable with ambiguity and want to push design methodologies
• You’re open. You take chances, aren’t afraid to fail and learn along the way, and can handle the unexpected with a smile. You’re energized by surprise and passionate about pushing beyond expectations
• You love working in teams and across disparate groups, and enjoy diving into design projects of every stripe. You’re the ultimate collaborator, but also a self-starter

Depth in one or more of these areas:

• Systems - logically visualizing complex systems, user interaction flows, and beautiful user interfaces. Experience with prototyping tools including Framer, Figma, Principle, Flinto, Invision, Principle, AE, Keynote, etc
• Service - designing interactions as part of a greater service; being thoughtful about how the orchestration of the service may impact how someone will interact with a specific touchpoint
• Visual - best practices of graphic design (grid, hierarchy, color, typography, etc) to create beautiful and engaging visual user interfaces. Design tools including Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Figma, or similar
• Motion - 2D/3D animation and dynamic elements that enhance a digital experience
• Digital Products - experience building, prototyping, and continually evolving digital products throughout the product lifecycle

What gets us excited:

• Experience in creating a digital design at a high fidelity.
• Comfort using prototyping tools to convey movement and functionality of concepts and demonstrate excellent communication skills to clearly articulate design decisions.
• Some experience building simple, interactive, coded prototypes using HTML, and JavaScript.
• A passion for design, a pulse on emerging trends and technology, and a developed point of view about your work.

Some previous projects to check out:

FloodHelpNY: A platform for engaging and informing New York City homeowners about how they can protect their home and finances from flooding

A Digital Literacy App for Young Learners: Designing an adaptive, game-based experience for classrooms in Brazil

GE Healthcare: To optimize the effectiveness of their CT scanner, GE Healthcare hired IDEO to redesign the console user interface to help both junior and senior technicians work efficiently without sacrificing safety or efficacy

A New Way to Vote for the People of Los Angeles: An intuitive, accessible voting experience and ballot machine for every type of voter

Some articles from our interaction design community:

• How I Taught Myself to Code in 3D
• A Day in the Life of an Interaction Designer
• Prototyping with Chatbots
• Why Designers Need to Start Thinking About Blockchain

Application instructions

We will be accepting applications from Friday, February 7th through Sunday, February 23rd, 2020 until 12pm PST. Please submit your resume, cover letter, and relevant work samples or link to your website.

• When submitting your work samples/portfolio, please indicate your specific role(s) and contributions to each project presented
• When submitting your cover letter , please answer 2 of the 3 questions below within your cover letter. We read each one, make it count.
  • Describe a moment when you came to a surprising realization or learning that altered the course of a design?
  • What is design not doing enough of?
  • How would teammates describe your collaboration style?
• On the application, you’ll be asked to specify your geographical interest between San Francisco, Cambridge, and London

Interview Process:

What you can expect from the process: We will be reviewing applications in early March and will notify candidates if they are moving forward in the process at that time. Candidates who advance to a first-round interview will have a 30-minute conversation with an IDEOer about their experience and a mix of a portfolio and skills share. Candidates who advance to the second round will have a more robust portfolio share and skills interview. The 2nd round may have more than one stage and may vary slightly by location. Internship offers will be extended in early April 2020. Internships are approximately 3, 6 or 12 months in length, start and end dates may vary based on location.

Equal Opportunity Employer

IDEO is an equal opportunity employer; applicants are considered for all roles without regard to race, color, religious creed, sex, national origin, citizenship status, age, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, marital, parental, veteran or military status, unfavorable military discharge, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state or local law.