My PEY internship officially started May 7, 2009.  This coming Sunday marks the end of my first month!  Fifteen more months to go!  It feels as if the first few weeks just flew by, but I have to admit, I’m still pretty lost in terms of where I stand in the team, and where our team stands in terms of software development and IBM as a whole.  Now let me try to sum up what I remember doing for the first 4 weeks.

Week 1:  Orientation

We started work on a Thursday, and half of that day was orientation.  A little more than a hundred students sat in the Amphitheatre listening to a series of presentations one followed by another.  After that, we were split into 3 groups and each group alternated in getting a tour of the building, getting a tour of our gym, and getting our photos taken for our badges.  The rest of the Thursday afternoon and Friday, I mainly spent reading DB2 material, meeting the people I’ll be working with, and familiarizing myself with the building.

Week 2:  Getting Started

By the end of the first week, I already started configuring my desktop at work.  The rest of this second week also consisted of some installations here and there.  I still spent most of my time reading about DB2 though.  The most exciting thing about the second week was the fact that I finally got exposed to something UX related.  I got to sit into a secondary evaluation of a product that last year’s PEY student has already done a primary analysis for.  I was really happy to be able to draw back on a lot of things that we learned in our HCI course at school.  I didn’t feel as lost as I thought I would be because I already have most of the background knowledge needed to understand these analyses.

During Week 2, I also found out which project I will be taking part in.  This project has had no usability team participation in the past, so we will be starting right from the beginning, where we generate preliminary results through walkthroughs…etc.  Another team member and I will be the main ones working on this, but we will also be coordinating with the development team as well as other people that are involved in the product.  Seems like a good start already!

Week 3:  Now what do I do?

After getting assigned to be part of a project, I was told to complete a usability walkthrough already.  Having not done it before, I was very lost (and I still am).  But I was told to just use my judgment, and ask lots of questions.  Having learnt all these usability assessments and procedures at school, I wasn’t sure which ones I were to apply.  But after speaking with others, I finally decided to take bits and pieces of what I learned, and make variations to it as appropriate.  I think the most important things to keep in mind are probably the purpose and goal behind these analyses, and to focus on usability and not to get sidetracked.

Week 4:  Machine!!

Today’s Wednesday, so it’s not exactly the end of this week yet.  But I already know what the highlight of this week will be.  Since the second week of work, I’ve been trying to arrange for a test machine to be set up in our lab for me to do the assessment on.  However, there has been a lot of complication and confusion in between.  After lots and lots of email-writing and instant messaging, our machine is finally on its way!  I think we’ll get it by tomorrow, and I can finally start assessing the installation and configuration of our product! :)

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This PEY experience is definitely quite different from school.  A lot of this reminds me of how I felt at the beginning of last summer when I was developing full-time for Google Summer of Code 2008.  It’s always hard to get started, and I’m trying to constantly remind myself about that.  I sure hope I can contribute more to the team in the near future, and actually be of some help! :)