Intern Project

During my internship at DEPT, all the interns were challenged to design and build an in-house tool. The problem we aimed to solve was that designers spend a lot of time searching for inspiration online when working on projects, and this process could be made faster, easier, and even enhanced with AI. As interns, we had full control over the exploration, design, and development phases. Our team included strategy, UX, UI, and development interns, allowing us to tackle the project from multiple perspectives.

We kicked off the project with several workshops to define our goals. What exactly did we want to build? Which challenges were designers currently facing, and what features would be most valuable in a tool like this? To answer these questions, we conducted interviews, gathered feedback, and organized all our findings on a Miro board. This allowed us to make team decisions on tasks, priorities, and next steps.

After the workshops, we all dove into our respective tasks. The UX intern started creating wireframes, while I, as the visual design intern, began designing screens to showcase the visual style of the tool. My focus was primarily on backgrounds, imagery, and color usage. The colors and typography were drawn directly from the DEPT branding guidelines.

I also explored the visual design of the login page, the first screen every designer would see when logging in with their work account.

During the visual exploration, the UX intern conducted tests and gathered feedback on our designs. This led to new feature ideas, such as a music player to play music while using the tool and a personal profile section for saving discovered work. We also expanded the focus beyond imagery to include text, allowing designers to describe keywords or feelings. The final concept enabled designers to input text or a name and receive AI-generated inspiration in the form of images, text, descriptions, and more.

Once our design phase was complete, the development interns took over and worked closely with us to ensure the final product matched our designs. Overall, the project was an incredibly fun experience. As interns, we had a great time collaborating and delivering a product created entirely by interns.