Internships
American Association of Teachers of German
I completed an internship as a data analyst with the American Association of Teachers of German where I integrated data from 135,000 Schools to create a useful and in-depth overview of their foreign language capacity.
Goal
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This project aimed to link school locations with federal income tax to identify schools with less resources to benefit grants for existing German programs. Information from federal sources needed to be aligning with the school records through Excel coding.
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A second goal of the project was to create a visually appealing and user-friendly map for the web page of the German education program to support easy and fast comprehension for visitors. Here, the target users of the visualization needed to be identified first to then create visuals directed to their specific needs and preferences.
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By focusing on data matching, creating engaging visuals, and understanding the user base, the project aims to complete the AATG (American Association of Teachers of German) database with valuable income tax information and enhance the overall user experience by improving accessibility and usefulness of its web interface for the employees of the AATG as well as for online visitors.
German UI/UX consulting company
I worked as an intern for The Path Group which is a consulting firm for digital transformation and sustainable development in Berlin, Germany. They cooperate with other companies and help them to design their products and to organize workshops around data visualization with the larger goal to create a more sustainable environment.
Goal
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Take part in actual hands-on work in product redesign projects
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Opportunities to cooperate with clients to gain experience.
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Assessment if this type of work is what I would like to do.
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Example for a company-internal project: I was allowed to work on the website of the company. I was introduced to the concept of ‘best practice research’ for flow and design aspects. ‘Best practice research’ is a skill that has since helped me in personal projects but also in schoolwork.
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Example for a company-external project: I had the opportunity to cooperate with another organization. It took part in planning meetings and eventually developed a search function for city zip codes.
Learning Outcome
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I was introduced to new tools, such as figma, and learned the importance of doing a basic sketch before working on details.
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I met other UX designers and heard about their work and the thought process that goes into what they do.
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I studied the designs of Icons, and learned for example, that icons need to look as universal as possible.