What makes an internship good, bad or indifferent? In this series, international students tell their stories.
More than 40 hours of video footage, 8200 kilometers of travel, a broad subject and six passionate students working on a creative budget.
In short, my ‘Design the New Business’ was an unconventional summer internship. But this internship was also a turning point in my academic life and will be a constant source of inspiration for my professional life.
I was keen on utilising my vacation for a summer internship. A short stint that could give me hands on experience of the skills I’d gained during my Master’s and how they would be productive in industry. Finding an internship started with looking at the guest lecturers who I was keen to work with, followed by the process of writing emails asking if I could get an intern position. After waiting through the cold Christmas vacation, one January morning I received an email which said I had an internship.
’Design the New Business’ was a 39-minute documentary made by six international students of MSc Strategic Product Design at the Industrial Design Engineering faculty. It all started in 2011, when we approached Erik Roscam Abbing, founder of Zilver innovation, asking for a summer internship. Instead of just another internship at his firm, he asked us to work on something that had been brewing in his mind: make a documentary about how design is shaping business.
Uncertainty about the process, complexity of the subject and chaos were a few things we encountered in the beginning. ”We weren’t filmmakers,” recount fellow team member intern, Esra Gokgoz. “We’re probably still not, but as designers we often strive to be storytellers, addressing a specific audience with specific interests and taking them on a proverbial journey, using our skills to provoke their thoughts and interest. In this sense, this project was no different. Except for the additional challenge of learning the rather complicated process of filmmaking. Teamwork and collaboration, the interconnection between people was my personal learning.”
Or as Juan David Martin rightly put it, “our team learned to communicate more effectively and maintain a positive working atmosphere”. It was a demanding project that put our personal and professional skills to test. We were six designers, all extremely passionate with strong opinions, which led to occasional conflicts, but we would then thrash out each point of conflict until consensus was reached.
No clue
After a crash course in filming and long discussions about the flow of the movie, we managed to put up a storyboard. The interviews themselves were a difficult exercise in time and resource management. A small suitcase containing basic paraphernalia for filming would be passed on at airports and train stations, as we divided ourselves into smaller groups, travelling all over Europe interviewing academics, innovators in industry and design practitioners.
As we heaved a sigh of relief after the interviews, the task of editing incredible hours of precious footage to fit into a 30 minute format was even more daunting. Long, sleepless nights accompanied the editing of the movie, which was done on a tight schedule, in order to be able to release the documentary during Dutch Design Week in October 2011.
Probing deeper into the stories during the interviews made us aware of the details which exist in every industrial domain, with various technicalities and challenges typical to each one. “The outcomes of having come in contact with so many experts in strategic design were just so immense for being described or quantified,” adds intern team member, Marta Ferreira de Sá. “Every interview was fruitful, not only for the documentary but for all of us and our personal perspectives on the subject.”
The documentary is available online and is being screened around the world in universities, incubator and start-up labs, design and business associations, and we’re still receiving critical feedback, which helps us take the discussion to different levels. Today I look back and think that when we committed to it, we had no clue about the magnitude of responsibility. We hadn’t foreseen the challenges we were going to face; nevertheless, it was an extraordinary internship that will always bring a smile to my face.
To watch and learn more about the documentary visit www.designthenewbusiness.com
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