Digital Media Internship Experience 2.A: Software Product Design for User Interface and User Experience (UI/UX)
Remote / Work-from-Home Position: Rolling Start and End Dates; Full-time and Part-Time Options; Unpaid Internship for Training, Practical Experience, and Process Improvement. Apply now for all start-dates.
About Us: Bashpole Software, Inc. has been in business since 2006 with services such as applied research and development, nonprofit marketing, and data services. Our mission is to develop technology to help the world help itself. Bashpole Software addresses the urgent issue of misinformation, supports nonprofits in accomplishing their advertising goals, and collaborates with the government research and development community for artificial intelligence software. Bashpole has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the sales of services to nonprofits. Bashpole offers professional internship experiences in departments such as Marketing, Business, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Digital Media, Technical Writing, and Human Resources. Check our Careers page for further details: https://bashpolesoftware.com/careers/
Internship Description: For this position, there is a wide variety of projects with main topic is to design web-based software mainly for our upcoming main product “PromotorMotor”. It is an application for web and mobile that automates the advertising process on Google to help non-profit leaders gain more attention for causes. We will create designs for things like the user interface for Promotor Motor, for landing pages that Promotor Motor will generate for our clients to use, and for our special analysis that currently only our company knows how to do for our clients. There will also be side projects involving prototypes using spreadsheets that we will eventually recode as software in Promotor Motor. Again, to make this clear, there may be a wide variety of design-related projects and we are looking for people with open minds about putting into practice what you have learnt about design for a wide variety of products including, but not limited to, user interfaces.
Tasks and Responsibilities:
- Work on User Interface and analyze User Experience (UI/UX). Specifically with PromoterMotor and websites doing market research and surveys at least within the company if not also beyond
- Create general advice and guidance for nonprofits on how to improve their online interfaces and experiences, such as improving how they engage the public
- Interns will work on graphic designs to illustrate how this advice/guidance will look
- Participate in a remote-work environment, learning how to manage a diverse workforce
- Build a strong connections with other interns and staff people through networking meetings while remaining socially distanced
- Attend regular meetings to prevent isolation and facilitate collaboration
Note: This is by no means an exhaustive list but it gives an indication of the many projects taking place. You might focus on some of these to the exclusion of others. Tasks will change according to business needs.
Resume Accomplishments: After completing this internship, here are the top accomplishments that you may be able to add to your resume:
- Designed or improved feature for Bashpole’s main software product
- Designed or improved web-based interactivity for Bashpole’s clients
- Participated in and expanded the training that will benefit future interns
Learning Objectives:
- Design: Designing websites or web applications while developing specifications or procedures for website development or maintenance.
- Reading and Writing Comprehension: Excellent oral and written communication skills in work related documents
- Time Management, Organization and Coordination: Staying focused on different tasks, and using time, energy, strength, mental capacity, physical space, etc. effectively and efficiently in order to achieve the desired outcome
- Service Orientation: Deepening a genuine interest in the nonprofit consulting sector
- Telecommuting: Working remotely in both a team and individually
- Communication: Connecting with both your coworkers and current as well as prospective clients with a positive personality, analytical mindset, and sense of humor
Technical Tools
- Experience with Google Suite, including Google Sheets
- Figma or Adobe Creative Suite (InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop)
- Experience with HTML and CSS is a plus but not required
Minimum Education and Experience: Applicants need to be enrolled in an eligible college or graduate program at the beginning of their internship. Previous internship experience is beneficial but not required.
Apply to One Position and One Experience, Only: Do not apply for more than one internship position at a time. Pick the one that interests you the most, apply for it, and then if you are invited for an interview, you may indicate interest in other positions at that time. Once we have been able to answer your questions, you can request to apply for a different position for the remainder of the interview.
Non-Discrimination Policy: All nonprofits we serve are required to be compliant with Google’s non-discrimination policies, meaning that Bashpole works with a diverse set of nonprofits such as nonprofits working with crime to mental health issues to combatting misinformation. Thus, Bashpole interns are expected to be non-discriminatory themselves and help us serve any nonprofit that fits the eligibility guidelines. See more at bashpolesoftware.com/careers.
Frequently Asked Questions about our Internships:
Who are the people that are more likely to succeed in this internship position?
- People who have a genuine interest in the nonprofit consulting sector as well as deep interest in their your field
- They like to get their voices heard and are proactive enough to speak up
- They take notes always and in great details
- They are able to set a schedule and stick to it
Why Intern at Bashpole Software?
- Real Hands-on Experience: Rather than the coffee-fetching of a typical internship, Bashpole Software, Inc. provides interns with hands-on experience as we develop a first-of-its-kind system to help non-profits gain the publicity that is currently more desperately needed than ever. Bashpole Software, Inc. enables you to learn from machine learning, machine vision, natural language processing, software development, IT, marketing, management, HR, and technical writing professionals. Your training and participation in our research and development can directly help nonprofits around the world to connect with donors, volunteers, employees, constituents, and more. In volunteering here, you can help nonprofits help the world on a larger scale than by interning for any one nonprofit. Join us in the pursuit of truth, knowledge, and how best to help the world make itself a better place.
- Make a Difference: Unlike classroom experiences, your training here will be with real projects. This allows you to have a larger impact than if you were to volunteer with a single nonprofit or government organization alone.
- Thoughtful Mentorship: Bashpole Software, Inc. enables you to work in small teams of typically 3 to 5 interns. You’ll meet regularly with fellow interns on your team. You’ll also meet weekly as a team to gain direct supervision and mentorship from the company’s CEO, senior staff members, and/or more seasoned interns.
- Network with Peers, Mentors, & More: Bashpole supports networking opportunities by helping you to learn how to effectively communicate with executives. This will allow them to build lasting impressions and have direct interactions with staff members and fellow interns around the United States and the world. Interns often report connecting with more people in our remote internships than they do in physical classrooms of comparable size because of the ways we encourage and facilitate networking meetings.
- Company Culture: Bashpole believes it’s crucial for interns to feel comfortable speaking up for what they believe in. We value suggestions for improvements on all aspects of our company and voicing opinions about projects in team settings. We also want interns with the ability to pursue the career growth that they want and the courage to request the kind of work that they want to do. Bashpole looks for intellectually honest individuals with a spirit of independence and interdependence.
- Workplace Readiness Training: There are a variety of corporate culture and communication soft skills that many organizations expect you to know, but few universities or companies actually provide training for workplace proficiency. As a result of this, we’ve developed something unique: our rules-of-thumb (RoT’s) training process. The RoT’s’ are the otherwise unwritten rules of professional etiquette straight from hard-learned experiences of industry professionals. We’re developing a book and a training system for explicitly teaching this kind of advice to our employees, interns, and eventually to others that will be valuable for their future career.
- Portfolio: With approval from management, this internship also offers opportunities for you to add examples to your professional portfolio, which you can later use for future job applications.
- Credit: If you want work-study or school-credit for the internship, we can almost always provide the kind of oversight your university would require. Some educational institutions require prior approval before the start of an internship. It is your responsibility to check with your institution to be sure you meet all requirements before you accept a position.
What is the expected time commitment? We offer both part and full-time internships. Full-time is required in the summer but available throughout the year. All of our internships have start-time flexibility, where you can start at whatever season of the year that’s most convenient for you. Generally, a full-time internship (40 hours a week, or whatever is the maximum your college allows) lasts for 3 to 4 months, and a part-time internship (12 to 20 hours a week, whatever is the maximum your college allows) lasts up to 6 months, which works out to approximately the same total time commitment either way. You are able to switch from full-time to part-time, or vice versa, as long as the duration adds up to a total of about 60 work days or 480 work hours.
What does a typical week look like?
- You will work either collaboratively in a team or independently on a project of your choice from a list that we will provide
- In weekly team meetings, you will be guided by Bashpole employees who typically have from 10 to 20 years or more of relevant work experience
- In addition to this, you’ll have intern-only meetings for collaborating with your peers, reviewing each other’s work, and answering each others’ questions
- Every other week, we will have a “Rule of Thumb” meeting to offer our advice about corporate culture and communications soft skills: these are mostly from lessons that we learned the ‘hard way’ in the workplace, things that no one taught us in college classes but that most employers expect you to know
- You’ll choose hours to work by yourself by putting them on a calendar that you’ll share with your colleagues; the times of day and days of week will be flexible
Can I Join More than One Team? Not in parallel; you could only participate in one team at a time. However, we welcome and encourage sequential internships, meaning participating in one team at one time and then another team at another time.
What are the Challenges to Expect? This internship is going to take hard work and sometimes will be an imperfect experiment in training. There may be occasional communication at odd hours due to time differences and urgent matters. There will be more intern-intern interaction than with employees, and you can expect a mix of training from supervisors and finding and developing training yourself. Tasks may be vague and unclear at times as some assignments will be new. However, we believe interns grow by dealing with such challenges and working through them: this is how the real world works. Our organization is run by real people — and while we are not perfect — our intentions are to work hard and be the best we can be. We look for interns that have the humility to admit the same about themselves.
What were the Testimonials of our Previous Interns? Check testimonials of our previous interns on our Careers page: https://bashpolesoftware.com/careers/
What are the requirements/ expectations for this internship?
- Be generally available for meetings during business hours – we have team and individual meetings every week via Google Meet and similar online conferencing software
- Flexible daily start and stop times
- For internships taken during the fall or spring, work part-time. For internships during the summer, work full-time. Internships can be a mix of part and full time.
- Bashpole expects interns to manage their individual schedules.
- Internship begin and end dates are flexible according to your university’s calendar for classes
Why is it an Unpaid Internship? Bashpole is a for-profit company that’s rebooting itself, which explains the start-up-like environment. Due to these circumstances, we currently don’t provide compensation. However, we always support and encourage interns to reach out to their universities to apply for school credit or scholarships that some universities offer to students to help them cover living expenses when they take unpaid internships. There are no fees or expenses for participating in our internships. In lieu of payment, we provide interns with rich experiences such as receiving mentorship, the responsibility to create training, strong recommendation letters based on performance, and the opportunity to graduate to advanced management-based seasons. Bashpole Software, Inc. complies with all US Department of Labor Federal Internship Guidelines per https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm. This position also complies with NACE Criteria for internships per http://www.naceweb.org/about-us/advocacy/position-statements/position-statement-us-internships/#sthash.WbfvUjco.dpuf.