Formlabs PreForm
Creating seamless 3D printing experience
Type
Internship
Team
Intern designer (me) +
1 designer + 2 PMs +
2 developers
Timeframe
July 2024 - Present
Tools
Figma, Adobe Suite,
Arduino
Context
I'm currently working as a Product Design Intern at Formlabs' Core UX Team and designing across desktop and on-printer embedded platforms.
Impact
During my internship, I have delivered 3 main projects so far including a contextual help feature for novice users, a maintenance feature on 3D printer's UI, and new components to the design system.
NOTE: Unfortunately, I'm not able to share more details publicly due to NDA. Please feel free to reach out and I'd be more than happy to chat about it privately.
Snippets of my projects
Learnings
A mind-opening ride
Working at Formlabs' UX Team is definitely a highlighted moment of my career as a Product Designer. Not only the features that I designed to help our users print pieces better and faster, but the interpersonal connection, generous support and help, and all the insightful conversations I was honored to have there.
Get buy-in early
Prototypes speak louder than words! I learned that creating quick, tangible prototypes early in the process is key to winning over stakeholders. It's far more effective than working in silos and presenting a fully-baked idea that might miss the mark. Plus, it's a great way to spark collaborative discussions and catch potential issues before they become roadblocks.
Design in a technical environment
One of the biggest challenges I had was learning the language to communicate with engineers—software, embedded, and mechanical. My secret tool for effective collaboration with them is regular chats with sketches and flow charts to understand feasibility and edge cases as early as possible.
Beyond "user research"
My mindset on user research is to always conduct full-cycle study which could guide the design, while in real-world scenario, I discovered that other facets of research could also bring valuable insights, such as relating NPS to UX with marketing team and making competitive analysis with PMs.
thanks for stopping by;)
Handcrafted with
