See what our interns got up to and what they thought of our apps

Last week the design team had two interns undertaking their work experience at the London office.

Our first student is studying computer science for her GCSEs and has an interest in Python programming and software engineering. The second student is studying Geography and IT and had a general interest in IT.

The tasks

We wanted them to experience what working in the design team is like, so we set them two tasks:

Task 1 – Create a poster of your work experience

We asked them to keep a note of the key things that they had been doing and what they learned throughout the week.

They were then asked to create two paper versions of their posters, which were reviewed by one of our visual designers. After being reviewed, the designers helped the student to create a final electronic version, which they could take back to school with them.

Task 2 – Convergence tablet

We asked them to use the convergence tablet as their device during the week for user testing purposes.

We wanted them to:

• Send emails
• Take notes
• Update social media
• Take images
• Organise their gallery
• Share something with a friend
• Play games
• Play music
• Read news articles or other articles

We asked for feedback on:

• What they liked about convergence
• What would they like to see on the tablet?
• What was their favourite app
• What can we improve?

They were expected to talk through their feedback for 15 minutes with two designers.

Feedback

By the end of the week we wanted our interns to have the confidence to present their findings to us, as well as experience a review process with their poster designs.

The feedback we got from our first student – who used the tablet for 4 days, in between her other tasks – said: ‘ready, not a prototype, sleek and lightweight’. What she liked most about it was that ‘it can be a whole computer if you connect it’. She also liked the UbuntuStore.

The feedback we got back from our second student – who used the tablet in between tasks of making bootable USB drives and learning code – was that he ‘likes how it has the capability to … just pick it up and plug it into a monitor … Because it means that you don’t have to carry anything around, just a tablet.’
His favourite app was the Browser, he said ‘because it gives you access to everything’ and he thought it was ‘better than Safari because Safari blocks a lot of things like Flash’. He thought that the camera was of ‘good quality and focused quickly’ and felt it was easy to take photos and videos.

We also received suggestions on what they wished to see in the future and what they thought could be improved, which was great to see from the student demographic. We have captured all of this and can incorporate some of these ideas.

Work experience poster

With the help of one of our visual designer’s, we reviewed our first student’s paper designs and helped bring her poster to life.

This poster was the fruits of her labour and she was then tasked with finishing it off at home, ready to take back to school with her.

Our London office really values the work our work experience interns undertake in the week they are here during the summer. Many of them tend to have interests in technology and our open source nature is a good way to give them a flavour of the Ubuntu design and engineering process.

Want to be an intern at Canonical?

If you’re a student and like what you’ve seen so far, and would like to undertake your work experience with us please do get in touch with Stefanie Davenoy – stefanie.davenoy@canonical.com.