MSc User Experience Design student, Jenny, undertook a placement with Cardtrend UK for her professional placement year. Find out what this entailed and advice she has for students doing a placement.
Can you share how you secured your role? How did you find the role? What was the application process?
I secured my role by applying through the Careers and Student Opportunities portal. I submitted a CV, cover letter and completed an interview with Vashti, the Head of Sales and Business from Cardtrend UK.
I really enjoyed the role; it allowed me to develop my skills in visual interface and UI design - something I wanted to improve on as my final Master's was researched-based rather than design. The application process was smooth. There were not too many stages. The interview was informal and relaxed. Vashti put me at ease straight away as she was very friendly and accommodating.
When applying for this role, how did you prepare? For example, did you contact the careers team or speak to you lecturer etc?
I contacted the Careers and Student Opportunities team for a CV review and mock interview practices, as I was applying for other roles in UX at the time. Because of the amount of practice I had, it made me confident approaching the Cardtrend interview.
Tell us a bit about your role? What was a typical day like?
On my first day I met Vashti and the team where I found out more about Cardtrend and my specific project. We then created a weekly plan for the duration of the internship.
During my time working at Cardtrend, no two days were the same. My role was centred around designing a mobile application mock-up for a transport/navigation experience geared towards neurodivergent individuals.
In our weekly meetings, Vashti and I set goals surrounding what we wanted to achieve. This included completing a competitive analysis of other similar applications, creating personas, deciding on the key features, designing the applications' UI (colours, typography, avatars, achievement badges) and finally, designing a high-fidelity mock-up. Every time I got stuck, Vashti was there to provide support and guidance.
How valuable has it been for you to undertake a placement? Do you feel it has helped prepare you for your future career?
It has been extremely valuable for me. I had the opportunity to learn a lot about UI design and creating visual elements, something I had not been focusing on in the past. It proved to me that I can learn new skills in a short time. It helped me prepare for my future career as I can now say that I've done a UX project in industry for a company.
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What has been the biggest highlight of the experience?
My top three highlights would be:
- Meeting with the team and finding out what features they would like to prioritise. It was interesting working with people from different backgrounds and understanding what their needs are with the application.
- Designing the avatar for the application. As this was a transport app based in Birmingham, I re-designed the Birmingham Bull) - a friendly blue bull that travels with the user.
- Meeting up with Vashti in-person and showing her the final mock-up of the application. I was so proud of myself that day.
What was the biggest challenge? How did you overcome this?
My biggest challenge was staying motivated. I was working from home and felt isolated sometimes. What helped was having Teams calls with other interns to hear more about their projects and getting to know them.
Do you have any advice for students currently looking for placements?
To not give up. It can be difficult to find placements, however something that helped me was understanding that although I couldn't control the outcome, I could control my actions.
Even if I had a bad day in my placement search or received a rejection, I promised myself that I would try again tomorrow and submit more applications. I truly believe I was able to secure my placement in the end because I was resilient and kept applying even though there were times where I felt discouraged.
