College Internship Website Design

Fall 2025 | UXD 1030 Interface Design Role: User Researcher

Project Overview

In my Interface Design course, my team was tasked with designing a website that helps college students find internship opportunities while also providing professional development resources. The project required us to develop a complete brand identity and interactive prototype within a one-week timeline.

To begin, we conducted a competitive analysis of platforms like Handshake and ZipRecruiter to understand how internship listings are structured and how users navigate job search experiences. While these platforms offered extensive listings, we identified a key issue: they often overwhelm users with large amounts of unstructured information and limited guidance.

We then conducted user interviews with college students to better understand their needs. A consistent theme emerged—students struggled to navigate large datasets and wanted clearer ways to filter, prioritize, and understand opportunities.

Based on these insights, we defined our design direction:

• Prioritize clarity over quantity

• Break large datasets into manageable sections

• Provide guided navigation rather than relying on exploration alone

Throughout the design process, we iterated on multiple layout concepts. Early versions displayed too many listings at once, which made scanning difficult. In response, we refined the structure to improve readability, hierarchy, and usability, ultimately leading to a more focused and intuitive interface.

Project Goal

The primary goal of this project was to design a usable and visually cohesive internship platform that simplifies how college students search for opportunities while also supporting their professional growth.

To achieve this, we focused on:

• Creating a clear and consistent visual identity

• Designing an intuitive layout for browsing and comparing listings

• Structuring large amounts of information in a digestible way

• Supporting both student users and employers within the same platform

Personal Contributions

I contributed to both the research and interface design process, with a focus on translating user needs into actionable design decisions. On the research side, I analyzed existing internship platforms and synthesized findings from user interviews. One of the most important insights was that users were not struggling with a lack of opportunities, but rather with how information was presented and navigated. Using this insight, I helped guide design decisions that focused on reducing cognitive overload and improving usability.

On the design side, I contributed to the interactive prototype in Adobe XD. I designed a dropdown navigation system that allowed users to filter and navigate internship listings more efficiently. This interaction was important because it enabled users to refine results without leaving the page, improving both speed and usability. I also supported layout decisions that improved visual hierarchy, ensuring that key information—such as job titles, locations, and requirements—was easy to scan and compare.

Project Results

The final result was a functional internship platform prototype that allows students to efficiently browse opportunities while also accessing professional development resources.

More importantly, the design decisions made throughout the process directly improved the user experience:

• Pagination reduced cognitive overload by breaking large sets of listings into manageable sections

• Dropdown navigation improved filtering efficiency, allowing users to quickly refine results

• Improved visual hierarchy made listings easier to scan, helping users identify relevant opportunities faster

Feedback from peers and users indicated that:

• The platform felt more organized and easier to navigate than comparable tools

• Users appreciated the structured layout and clearer filtering options

• The interface reduced the feeling of being overwhelmed when browsing multiple listings