Creating the Training and Onboarding Materials for Your Design Internship Program
Effective training goes a long way in providing your intern with the tools and knowledge they need to be successful in their role.
Before your internship program begins, you can get started on creating the training and onboarding materials. The goal of your training materials is to create any and all resources that help your intern perform well in their role.
What we’ll cover in this post
🍎 Your training materials should cover two groupings of subjects: 1) company and team topics and 2) internship topics. Each of these can be broken down into specific trainings.
🍎 For a more efficient and engaging training process, break up materials into asynchronous (async) and synchronous (sync) trainings. Async training can be denser and completed by the intern in a self-paced way. Sync training can be more topical, hands-on, and interactive. Consider which of your training topics fit into which category.
🍎 Spend time thinking through which role-specific training topics would be helpful for your intern, considering their experience level and background. This training will segue into your intern getting started on their projects.
Suggested steps
✅ Spend some time each week, or each day, chipping away at your training materials.
✅ Outline which training topics are relevant to your company, team, and internship. Brainstorm possible subjects you’ll want to cover for each of the categories of company and team topics versus internship topics.
✅ Keep track of all the different training ideas and topics you have in mind. Decide which ones are worth pursuing and envision what the most effective format could be: written documentation, a recorded video walkthrough, an activity, etc.
✅ Develop a method of organizing and collecting all your training materials. For my past programs, we kept all the training assets in a single Figma file, organized into different pages. This allowed the intern and all involved parties to refer back to it easily.
Getting started
When I was creating the training materials for our internship program, I found it helpful to start by considering three main points:
What the role itself is. Depending on the role’s complexity and any anticipated learning curve, you can develop training materials to help the intern get up to speed and acclimated quickly.
How much experience your intern is coming in with, either specific to the role and industry, or in general. Because of this point, I’ve found it helpful to wait until your candidate has formally accepted the offer to tailor certain training materials accordingly. Or, you can also do another pass over your training materials after that point to include any other training that they may find helpful. Utilizing your notes from the intern’s interviewing experience comes in handy here.
What training materials currently exist, if any (either specific to your company, or materials that you can find online). Creating your intern’s training materials doesn’t necessitate reinventing the wheel, so you should build upon what’s currently available.
With those points in mind, you can brainstorm what training materials would be helpful to create or curate. At a foundational level, I recommend covering the following subjects in your training:
Team and company topics
An introduction to the team. In a general sense, this should cover the people, processes, and projects that compose the team in a way that your intern can easily understand. This could include:
Introductions for each of the current team members and/or explanations of their roles
Any common jargon or acronyms that your team uses
Any products or services that your team is focused on
For our past internship programs, we covered the immediate team—the same people with whom the intern has interviewed, and other collaborators from the product, design, and engineering teams—and their backgrounds, responsibilities, and projects.
We also highlight any specific areas in which the intern might find themselves working with each of these individuals, so that the intern can understand how their responsibilities may overlap. Reiterating each person’s unique role and context helps the intern better understand how everyone fits into the larger picture.
An introduction to the company and org chart. This should cover basic points such as:
The company’s mission, values, and products
Internal details like the organizational structure and reporting lines
This can be helpful for the intern to see where the team is located in the grand scheme and how their projects impact others. It creates a sense of inclusion for the intern, while also providing valuable insight into the company’s operations. And ultimately, it helps the intern see what future potential there is for them at your company, and what possible roles they could move into in the future.
An introduction to communications and best practices. Each team has different methods of communicating, so it’s helpful to outline this for your intern so they can also communicate in those preferred ways— while feeling comfortable doing so. Especially as more workplaces move toward fully-remote environments, this is an important (but often overlooked) point to cover. Specifically, I recommend covering the following:
Reinforce open communication practices and the value of it
Outline available communication channels
Specify who the intern should correspond with for certain topics (so they know who to ask)
As an example: in my past programs, I covered how we communicate mostly via Slack, Google Meet, and asynchronous communications like Loom videos. Teaching the intern about your company’s different communication channels and what kind of communication necessitates which channel helps the intern understand how they can appropriately and effectively get in touch with others. Ultimately, it sets the foundation for a beneficial working relationship between you, your intern, and the larger team.
An introduction to meetings. Depending on your team and company, you’ll have meetings of all varieties:
Team meetings
Project meetings
Company-wide meetings
Individual meetings with your intern
Outlining the relevant meetings the intern will take part in helps to define the purpose and expectations of each meeting for the intern.
For example, indicating which meetings are specifically for the intern’s project will show them that they should come prepared with their own project updates. Or for other, larger team meetings, the intern can expect that only specific team members will lead the dialogue and that higher-level priorities will be discussed.
Meetings are an essential form of communication in the workplace, so teaching your intern about each of your unique meetings and how they’re typically conducted will help them feel more comfortable and equipped to contribute.
Internship topics
An introduction to the internship timeline and schedule. This can be as simple as reiterating the 9- or 10-week schedule and when the internship will end. I recommend showing a representation of the full schedule, such as a calendar. For more details, check out this post:
In the topic of the internship timeline and schedule, I’ve also found it helpful to call out any specific checkpoints or milestones along the way. Because the 10-week schedule at large can be hard to wrap one’s head around, the milestones indicate more tangible, immediate deadlines that are helpful for the intern to structure their work around and plan toward. Reviewing and discussing the timeline also provides an opportunity to remind the intern to pace themselves throughout the full internship, so they don’t get overwhelmed or burnt out.
An introduction to internship workflows and processes. At a basic level, this should cover how your intern can and should expect to get work done during their time. You can cover:
Any project management software you’ll use for managing tasks and work
Any methods of turning in work or getting feedback
How they should manage their work and working hours
For my past programs, I covered how we use Jira to manage our design work and collaborate with others, and explained how we use Slack and Loom for design critiques. I also mention that their work hours are flexible (especially because we’re a remote company), but that our team typically works 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. PST with a break for lunch, so I recommend following a similar structure.
As you can see, this topic can vary in level of detail, but it’s helpful to outline these workflows for the intern. Because most interns will come in without much work experience, these points help the intern understand how to structure their work in order to align with the workflows of the team.
An introduction to the role and projects. This is potentially the most granular topic of the internship training, as it should cover information specific to the role you’ve created.
As an overview, this should include:
The purpose of the intern’s role
What success in the role looks like
What specific projects the intern will be working on
What the deliverables and expectations are
The timeline for the project
Any people the intern will be working with
Resources available to the intern for their project
Because this point depends heavily on what your role is, here are some examples of how we’ve tailored this section of our past trainings (for more ideas, see the section further below, “Ideas of role-specific topics to cover”) :
For our UX research (UXR) internships, this part covered an introduction to the UXR field within the tech industry, why we decided to create a UXR role, and an overview of our past research work for the intern to build upon. Then I provided the materials I had created to structure the intern’s capstone project, which was creating and executing a quarterly research plan for our team.
For our brand design internship, this part covered an introduction to brand design within the tech industry, why we decided to create a brand design role, and an overview of our existing brand design work for the intern to build upon. Then I provided an overview of what we were looking for with the intern’s capstone project, which was creating our company brand kit. I also covered the smaller tasks that the intern would be working on and with whom they would collaborate for those projects.
For our product design internship, this part covered an introduction to product design within the tech industry, why we decided to create a product design role, and an overview of our existing product design work for the intern to reference. Then I provided an overview of the intern’s various projects: the smaller tasks they could start immediately, as well as the projected timeline and collaborators for their capstone project. This was slightly different from the previous two examples because their capstone project required working with several others on the team, so the timeline was more contingent on other factors. With the two roles listed above, their projects were more independently driven.
And finally, general career advice for the internship. Utilizing the training as the first formal opportunity to express your interest in mentoring and coaching the intern will set the foundation for a strong working relationship going forward.
This reinforces the human side of the internship and work experience, where you can emphasize that you want the opportunity to be beneficial not just in providing valuable experience for the intern but also to establish lifelong professional relationships.
Outside of the aforementioned advice for the intern to pace themselves during the internship, I also like to mention tips on making the most out of their internship experience. Small efforts throughout the internship like networking and meeting new people, keeping track of and asking questions on an ongoing basis, learning how to balance and prioritize responsibilities, and asking for help are all points that are important to mention. Their internship will fly by, and these efforts will make their experience more beneficial in the long run of their future career.
How to structure your trainings
Now that we have an idea of all the topics we’ll need to cover (and there are a lot!) in the internship training and onboarding, we can take a look at some ways of wrangling all these topics into an easy-to-understand format. That format will be what you roll out heavily in the first two weeks of the internship, and then periodically throughout the rest of the internship.
To reiterate, there are two general categories of topics that we’ve found helpful to cover in our internship training: 1) team and company topics and 2) internship topics. In a similar vein, I’ll introduce two methods of structuring your training that have been immensely helpful in making it possible to include all these different subjects. Those two methods are asynchronous versus synchronous training.
Asynchronous (async) training
Asynchronous (async) training is material that you develop or curate to be reviewed by the intern at any time and on their own (ideally, during the first two weeks). These could be video walkthroughs that the intern should watch, written documentation that the intern should review, or any type of activity or “homework” that the intern should do for the purposes of training.
These are typically covering topics that will be beneficial for the intern to spend some focused time on, or they could just be topics that are more straightforward, like a video explaining the company’s organizational structure. Usually, it’s helpful to put denser topics into an async format for the intern to refer back to when needed. Therefore, I recommend utilizing async training for the following topics:
Company background, mission, products, and org chart. For my past programs, this included a video covering the company and the different team responsibilities. I mention as part of the first synchronous training session that the intern can watch the video (by a soft deadline) and come prepared with any questions after the deadline.
Team structure, team philosophy and mission, team jargon, high-level projects worked on by the team, and team org chart. For my programs, this included an activity to review the timeline of our product launches and design work, and then we reconvened at a team meeting to discuss the activity and answer any questions.
Workflow walkthroughs, like specifics on using certain software or tools. For my programs, this included a video overview of how we use Figma and Jira, how we organize our projects within those, and how the intern can also use those programs to work effectively within the team.
Synchronous (sync) training
Synchronous (sync) training, on the other hand, is training that you’ll go over with the intern in real time.
In sync training, you’ll be going over certain materials that are better delivered or explained face-to-face (or via video call) while also getting to know the intern, asking them questions, or answering any questions they have. As a result, I recommend utilizing sync training for topics such as:
How to communicate effectively and best practices for communication. For my past programs, this included how we use Slack, who can answer questions about which topics, and how to ask effective questions, among other topics. This is helpful to cover synchronously because it reinforces the open communication philosophy in an approachable and personable way, rather than reading about it in documentation or learning about it from a recorded video.
An introduction to meetings and how to utilize meetings. For my past programs, this included an overview of our team meetings, project meetings, and individual meetings; an explanation of how each of them differ; and an outline of what expectations the intern should have of each. I’ve found it helpful to cover this in real time with the intern, so they can feel more comfortable attending and participating at meetings.
An introduction to the intern’s role and projects. For my past programs, this included an overview of the role and responsibilities, why we created the role and what we envision success in the role looking like, and what projects the intern will be working on. I would recommend having some async material prepared for this topic, like documentation or project guidelines, and then to utilize a synchronous session (or several) to go over the material and answer any questions. That way, the intern can refer back to the material and documentation, but they’ll also have a real time opportunity to ask you questions directly.
As you can see from these examples, which topics you’ll choose to create asynchronous training versus synchronous training will depend on the training materials you dive deeper into. I recommend viewing each topic above through the lens of asynchronous vs. synchronous and seeing which would be more appropriate. From there, you can also determine which training or subjects can be grouped together and which should be kept separate.
By creating a unique training program with these points, and including the asynchronous vs. synchronous variety, you’ll keep the intern engaged and excited about all the new information they’ll need to absorb. Ultimately, this will go a long way in enabling them to be successful in their role!
Case study: how I’ve iterated on the training methodology described above
My first program
In my first year of running the design internship program, I conducted most of the training synchronously, in real time via video calls.
I had created a few materials for our interns to review asynchronously, but they were more for the purposes of documentation—they were all written in a consistent way, and similar in the intention that the intern could reference them throughout the internship.
After my first year, I identified a few shortcomings with this process:
The async training was a bit dry and didn’t provide enough variety. Being that they were all written, it wasn’t the most engaging format. I suspected that going forward, it would be more engaging (and fun) to provide a few different formats for the async training. The differing formats would also help to communicate the information in different ways, which could help the intern absorb the content more easily. Some information is better explained visually or verbally rather than in written format.
Outside of those few async materials, we skewed mostly toward synchronous sessions, which proved to be a huge effort in the beginning of the internship. For the interns’ first day, I had blocked off nearly the full day for training sessions. Even though different people were contributing or leading different parts, it was still a lot of video calls. All parties felt pretty drained after, and I suspected that the all-in-one approach also wasn’t a very effective way of teaching information.
Besides blocking off the first few days for training, we didn’t create much opportunity for ongoing training or education. Having training sprinkled throughout the internship is definitely nice-to-have—it requires more resources, having a larger team to help out, and becomes much more time-intensive. So while it wasn’t realistic to aim for this in the first year, it was something I wanted to try out for following programs. There were many subjects and topics that I found as relevant and helpful to cover during the internship, but it was impossible to fit them all into the initial training and onboarding period.
My second program
For my second year, I adjusted my approach to the training process based on my lessons learned.
We divided the training between async and sync more evenly, choosing which topics are appropriate for which medium.
We focused the async training on denser, more complex topics that the intern could review on their own time and at their own pace.
We tailored the synchronous sessions to be more focused and hands-on, rather than broad and conceptual. They were focused on providing an overview of the async materials to guide the intern through the training, reviewing async material and answering questions, or kicking off a particular subject or project. They were also much shorter and more topical—instead of blocking off the full day for the internship overview, we shortened it to an hour or so and focused on introducing each team member and the async materials that we created.
Then, we’d reconvene the following day or within the next few days to answer questions about the async materials as a group. (This approach also models the “flipped classroom” methodology, where students complete work at home and then utilize class time for problem-solving and asking questions. In the internship training context, it allows the training to progress at a more organic pace and for the intern to get more valuable, individualized time with you and the team members.)
Our training approach that year was also more diversified. We now had more team members who could contribute to and lead their own internship training, so we were able to sprinkle sessions throughout the full 9 weeks. We covered role-specific topics, like how design and UX research work together, in addition to career readiness topics, like how to include and present your internship work in your portfolio, how to communicate effectively in the workplace, and how to transition from an internship to a full-time role.
These were topics that our team found relevant for our specific intern cohort, and we were able to create those trainings accordingly. Our team members and interns truly appreciated the variety of training from that program, because they provided helpful advice not just for one’s current role, but also for each person’s ongoing career development and growth.
Ideas of role-specific topics to cover
While some parts of the training are hopefully more straightforward (like those about your company or team), one of the more nebulous parts is the introduction to the role and projects. This portion of training will be the most critical to your intern’s success in their role, but it’s also extremely broad! Knowing how and where to focus in on, out of all the possible topics you could cover, is a challenge. Especially if your team is small and/or if your intern role is a brand new one, it can be tricky to nail down a direction for this topic.
To give you a starting point, I’ll list out each of the topics that we covered, in some shape or fashion, with our interns depending on their role. These should hopefully provide you with a launching point from which you can identify which topics would be relevant to your internship or brainstorm new ones.
For a UX Research (UXR) Intern role
Overview of the UXR profession within the tech industry, what those roles typically look like and are responsible for, and why we decided to create a UXR role
Overview of our past research work at our company
Our product development process and how UXR fits into that
Overview of the intern’s capstone project, creating and executing a quarterly research plan
Which teams they would work with for their capstone project, and in what ways
For a Brand Design Intern role
Overview of the brand design profession within the tech industry, what those roles typically look like and are responsible for, and why we decided to create a brand design role
Overview of our past brand design work at our company
Our brand design vision, how we represent ourselves through our brand
Examples of brand design work from other companies
File naming conventions for deliverables (and to always increment your work, even if you think there’s only one version needed or if it’s the final version)
How to iterate successfully (to enable senior team members to provide feedback, or to pick up where you get stuck)
How to get your work reviewed by senior team members and how to implement feedback
For a Product Design Intern role
Overview of the product design profession within the tech industry, what those roles typically look like and are responsible for, and why we decided to create a product design role
Our product design philosophy and what we hope to achieve with our product design work
Review of our past product design projects, their timelines, and their deliverables
Our product design and development process; others in the team with whom we frequently collaborate, like product managers, engineers, other designers, and stakeholders
The differences between our consumer and enterprise products, and how we design for each accordingly
How to use Jira effectively, the importance of tracking work, documenting one’s process, and communicating that
How we use Figma, how we organize our files, how we move work across pages, and how we utilize auto layout, variants, components, and other features within Figma
How to get your work reviewed by senior team members and how to implement feedback
Overview of our style guide and design system, and how to use our design system
Creating your training materials can be a huge undertaking, so I’d recommend setting aside some time each week, or each day leading up to the internship, to slowly chip away at the different training topics.
While the training preparation does require a lot of upfront work, remember that each material you develop makes a difference in providing your intern with the tools and knowledge they need to be successful in their role. Your intern will be arriving with an eagerness to learn and get started; by providing them with your thoughtfully-crafted training materials, you’ll enable them to hit the ground running.
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