China Mobile Internet
In August 2024, I completed a three-week summer internship at MIGU Internet, working mainly with the Network-wide Evaluation Department. During the internship, I strengthened my UI design skills through systematic PS practice, took part in a usability study for Mobile Cloud Drive to identify user pain points, joined interviews with overseas users to understand cross-cultural needs, and participated in an expert workshop to discuss improvement directions for cloud phone products. This experience broadened my perspective and significantly enhanced my technical and practical abilities.
01. UI Design (Task Background, Actions, Outputs, and Results)
During my internship, I focused on UI design and began learning Photoshop from scratch. With guidance from my mentor and step-by-step tutorial videos, I progressed from basic icon creation to banner replication and full-page layout design. By the end of the training, I had completed 11 icon replications, 2 3D designs, 1 Party emblem, 3 login pages, 3 banner components, and 2 homepage layouts, significantly improving my practical design skills.
Icon design: based on the original practice pieces, I added my own color palette.
Copying the Party Constitution
Icon copying practice : 3D icon, software icon, 3D egg
Mini-window replication.
Banner replication and creation.
Mobile Cloud Drive login interface replication.
Mobile Cloud Drive folder page replication.
Youdao Cloud Notes initial interface replication.
Homepage replication.
Login interface replication.
​Tile section design replication.
02. Usability Testing
In the second week, I participated in the usability testing of Cloud Notes to better understand user scenarios and needs. Through multiple tests across different usage contexts, I observed that users pay attention to very different details, highlighting the importance of continuous research for product improvement. These sessions taught me that enhancing a product is an ongoing process that requires careful attention to user feedback. From my observations, Cloud Notes’ voice-to-text feature stands out for its speed, clarity, and speaker labeling, while its text extraction and AI entry design still need improvement, as users found them less effective or hard to locate.
03. Overseas user interviews
I was grateful to take part in the user interviews for the 5G New Calling project, which aims to help foreigners living or traveling in China answer calls more easily through built-in voice translation. Many essential phone services—such as ride-hailing and food delivery—still lack foreign-language support, causing inconvenience and even anxiety for non-Chinese speakers. Through English phone interviews with international students, we learned about their main pain points: difficulty understanding questions, relying on phrases like “I’m a foreigner,” frequent call interruptions, and resorting to translation apps or messaging instead. One participant even mentioned calling far more often at home simply because everyone spoke the same language. When we showed them the sample prototype, they were genuinely excited and believed the feature would greatly improve their daily life in China.
04. Expert workshop
Near the end of my internship, I participated in a workshop focused on identifying issues and future directions for the Cloud Phone product. Through group brainstorming and hands-on exploration, we were able to quickly uncover key problems and gain diverse insights that one-on-one interviews might not reveal. The workshop also expanded discussions beyond existing pain points, inspiring ideas such as integrating AI assistants across devices to enable shared data and preferences. This experience deepened my understanding of group-based user research and highlighted the strong potential and innovative possibilities of Cloud Phone as it continues to evolve.
My internship summary
This was my first internship, which pushed me out of my comfort zone and taught me how to quickly adapt to a new work environment. I gained hands-on experience in diverse projects, improved my Photoshop skills, and got a real sense of the professional workplace. The internship closely connected to my studies, allowing me to apply classroom knowledge in usability testing and expert workshops, while also motivating me to deepen my learning and broaden my perspective. Interacting with mentors and colleagues provided valuable career advice, and although I initially struggled with task understanding due to inexperience, I learned to communicate more effectively to ensure my work stayed on track.