Last week I joined earthware as a summer intern and began my first week of real work (I’m a student, we do very little work half the year until exam cramming!).

earthware had produced a number of project ideas for the internship so my first task was to analyse each one. This included doing a SWOT analysis to check the viability of each product idea and a competitor analysis to find out what similar products are already on the market. I did not have much previous knowledge of technology so I started my research there. I learnt lots about the industry, including about bots which I found really interesting.

After I’d gained the tech knowledge I began the process of creating ideas, which ranged from useful and practical to exciting and innovative. Once I had done this I learnt about user personas and user stories, this allowed me to connect my ideas to how they would effect (and hopefully delight) real users. Once I had got into the mind of my users I found I could think of even more ideas for each project so I did further research on that.

Now we’ve got the ideas, the next step is to decide which project myself and the second intern (Tom, who will be joining us in a few weeks) will be working on over the 8 week internship. I’m really looking forward to what exciting products we can produce!