Pride Places
This past summer, I was a Product Design Intern at Pride Places, an LGBTQ+ directory start-up based in San Francisco, California. I had the opportunity to contribute towards the redesign of their web application, building out components in Figma for the new business-tier features.
Overview
- Organization: Pride Places
- Role: Product Design Intern
- Location: San Francisco, CA (Remote)
- Duration: May 2021 - Aug 2021
- Discipline: UX Research, Interaction Design, Visual Design
- Tools Used: Figma, Illustrator, Otter.ai
Key Outcomes
- Created desktop, mobile, and tablet wireframes and high fidelity assets for two new Pride Places business-tier features; (1) menu and (2) posts.
- Built a component & icon library in Figma and retrofitted existing assets using auto-layout.
- Designed a Pride Places brand-compliant email campaign to upsell churned users to a paid subscription tiers.
Business Menu Redesign
The first project I worked on during my internship was the redesign of the “Menu” feature that is only available to business tier subscribers. Developers had yet to implement the existing designs and I was tasked with updating them to be simpler and more modern. In addition to improving the overall UX, I also integrated a handful of recent product and design system updates. I began by conducting a usability audit of the existing designs before iterating upon them.
Design Components
Next, I built components in Figma for both the mobile and desktop business menu feature using auto-layout and variants. After final designs were approved, I added them to the global component library.
High-Fidelity Designs
Skills & Knowledge Gained
- UX design for web applications
- Introduction to Agile Methodology
- Iconography Design
- Figma! (components, auto-layout, & variants)
Here are some of the trends that I observed during my time on the Pride Places design team:
- Figma - all design work was done in the company’s shared Figma workspace.
- Design systems - I created a collection of Figma components that were built using auto layout and variants. Frequently used styles were saved as presets in Figma.
- iOS 15 safari - Pride Places web application features were designed with the mobile UI from iOS 15 Safari in mind.
Reflection
The Product Design internship at Pride Places has provided a fast paced, start-up environment where I was able to fully own projects from start to finish. By learning how to collaborate with other designers remotely using Figma, Slack, Jira, and Zoom, I was able to overcome the challenge of completing an internship in a new field during a pandemic. The internship experience has been a success as I met new people, expanded my professional network, learned invaluable UX design skills, and gained a great portfolio piece. I believe specifically the daily, hands-on user experience design work has prepared me for the upcoming school year and my future job.