I want a Internship!

So im curious how many other professionals (with a few years under their belts) have this desire…

I would love to take a 2 week vacation and go and do a internship in a design dept that develops products i have never done before.

Now perhaps im just strange but i think it would be a fun time and an opportunity to expand my knowledge, and have some fun at the same time.

I’ve often wished that the regular working world allowed for sabbaticals. I think doing a few weeks/months of work or research in a different area would be hugely beneficial to the creative well being of an employee.

Sign me up for doing a short internship to learn some new skills.

I would love this too. I think it’s called being a consultant :wink:

Really though, great idea. I’ve thought about doing this too, but I’m pretty sure none of my employers would agree. One of the frustrating things in product development is that we’re usually not allowed to discuss our problems nor their solutions because they are confidential to our employers. However, I’m pretty sure that whatever “secrets” you would find out would be more than compensated by the knowledge my org. would gain from you.

To conclude, how do we make this happen?

At one place I’ve worked, we sort of had a version of this. They called it “design immersion”. It was our big Far East clients that sometimes had an internal design team, they would send one or two of their staff to us in order for them to learn and experience Western culture/ways of working.

They’d work on all of our projects and then be able to also work on the project for their respective company to see how we would tackle it. Was a great experience from both sides and obviously good for building a long lasting relationship between client and consultancy.

I agree though it would be cool to work somewhere that does something completely different to your current employer and be able to tap in to the knowledge of the people at the other place. So really, how does this happen?

Internship is necessary to develop skills in one’s life. Through the internship, people are able to get the different kinds of skills in their own’s field. They can expert in their own field. Thanks for sharing this post.

So as i see it from a logistics standpoint to make something like this happen (of course each company may be different) but some of the major hurdles are.

  1. Have it be a unpaid (intern would use vacation time)
  2. Ensure that the companies involved are not competitors in anyways
  3. Both parties willing to sign CDA’s that do not conflict with any current contracts
  4. Intern is able to sign a document that states all work will belong to the company they are interning at

Now larger companies like this may require all of these but some smaller companies don’t care.

The value that can be presented to the companies is an exchange of knowledge on different design and development approaches (non confidential). this allows both companies to equally gain knowledge and insight that may help create new mental models that have the potential to effect their processes in a positive way.

Of course the Intern and Company pairing would need to be stigmatic and balanced. i.e A designer with 20 years experience should not go to a ID group where the average designer is 2 years into their career.