C3 AI

Summer Internship 2023 – focus on predictive CRM, Gen. AI integrations, and design systems scalability. Half my time spent on Predictive Applications team and half spent on Systems Design Language team.
Role
Product Design Intern
Duration
May - August 2023
Team
Systems Design Language and Predictive CRM Application
Website
www.c3.ai

C3 AI: Revolutionizing Predictive CRM by providing a single pane of glass across your Sales Ecosystem

I interned on the C3 AI Design Systems and Application teams as a product designer focused on atomic design system scalability and CRM application development for a $50M+ SaaS client.
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During my time at C3, I worked on both a visionary and descoped version of enterprise search and Gen. AI capabilities for C3’s CRM application (launched here) and worked to build a new notifications and popover UX pattern into C3’s new atomic design system.
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Due to NDA restrictions, I am unable to share the progress and final details of the projects, so please contact me if interested in hearing more about my time at C3

Mylarger design team who both continuously taught me new auto-layout tricks, made me feel like family, and pushed me to deliver a comedy skit at the company-wide talent show <3

The obligatory brainstorming post-it photo

Thank you Jeeyoung - my design systems manager for refining my attention to detail, making sure everything is pixel perfect, and inspiring me with his rad shoe game.

MY LEARNINGS

Reflection & Takeaways

Designing real applications (as opposed to class projects or visionary ideas) is rarely straightforward.

In class settings or visionary concepts, you sit with an empty figma file, some preliminary research, and an open canvas. The process for 0->1 products isn't far off. In building real applications and working within an established design system, I had to work with pre-determined PM specifications, balance client and internal needs, and work within rapidly changing business needs and re/deprioritizing. This made me look with a more evaluative lens at holistic product changes and constantly communicate with my team!

Nothing compares to primary research - designers are rarely the users of their own product (especially in enterprise or client-specific apps).

Enterprise and client-specific applications are unique because of the highly-tailored use cases and complex scopes. Simple onboarding flows are replaced with data integrations, unique user profiles, and robust customization. I realized the single most valuable research came from primary work and ethnographic interviews - watching user's key use cases and workflows unfold give an unparalleled look into how to build a successful product.

Consider edge cases often. Apps are rarely used as they are perfectly presented in the figma hifi prototype.

I love building pretty figma prototypes with fancy animations at perfect breakpoints and with no rescaling. But understanding that breaking up development into versions (V1, V2, Final) and building descoped products was a first for me. And having to grapple with truncation, usability across applications, and ecosystem issues were essential when building complex workflows.

Push yourself outside of your comfort zone - sweaty palm experiences lead to the greatest learning opportunities.

Whether it's having lunch with the CEO, asking a senior designer for feedback, or presenting a stand-up comedy routine to 500+ at the company-wide talent show, I found that the greatest points of growth over the summer came from uncomfortable situations. And as someone with hyperhidrosis, a fancy way of saying really sweaty palms, this often involved wiping my hands on my pants a few too many times.