Merge pull request #5039 from ONRR/dev

Dev-->Master

blog-site/src/data/author.yaml

@@ -36,4 +36,8 @@
 
 - id: Mojo Nichols
   bio: contract developer at the Office of Natural Resources Revenue
-  pic: ../img/mojo-pic.jpg
+  pic: ../img/mojo-pic.jpg
+
+- id: Alena Huang
+  bio: user experience intern at the Office of Natural Resources Revenue
+  pic: ../img/alena-pic.JPG

blog-site/src/pages/intern-experience/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+---
+title: "Reflections from our Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS) user experience intern"
+authors:
+- Alena Huang
+excerpt: "Our UX intern has made numerous contributions during her time with us. In this post, she discusses the projects she has been working on and takeaways from her experience."
+tags:
+- training
+- internship
+- UX
+- design
+- user research
+- virtual student federal service
+date: "2020-05-14"
+---
+
+Hello everyone! I am, Alena Huang, a student at the University of Notre Dame studying Visual Communication Design. I joined the team as a User Experience Intern for 9 months during the school year.
+
+## What I didn’t know when I started
+Coming into the internship, I didn’t have too much experience in user experience, but it was something I was interested in. I had some experience in HTML/CSS and web design, but other than that, I had a lot to learn about UX!
+
+## Projects I’ve worked on
+I’ve learned about all the different aspects of user experience and how they all fit within the process of design.
+
+### Content audit and sitemap
+The very first thing that I worked on was a content audit and [sitemap](https://92ix0j.axshare.com/) for ONRR.gov. This was really helpful in understanding the content and getting a sense of the scale of the information that the ONRR website provided. It was so surprising to see how many files were available to the public!
+
+Snapshots of the content audit:
+![Image of content audit spreadsheet showing the structure of pages on onrr.gov](./content-audit-1.png)
+
+![Image of content audit spreadsheet showing details of a few pages](./content-audit-2.png)
+
+### User research
+Throughout the internship, I learned how not only to create questions for interviews, but also how to conduct user interviews and testing. I enjoyed user interviews because this is where you get a sense of how users interact with the product. After researching through user interviews, analysis reports (reports from old surveys, comparative analysis reports, etc.), and site analytics, my team and I were able to come up with [five personas](https://os2cz3.axshare.com/#id=yiu1lh&p=user_types&g=1) and their [user flows](https://os2cz3.axshare.com/#id=6yg8m7&p=user_type__operator&g=1) for ONRR.gov. Additionally, I recently created a card sort to better understand how users grouped information on the website!
+
+One of the personas that we created, including pain points and main tasks:
+![Image of a persona for an operator of a leased well](./persona-example.png)
+
+
+### Visual design & interaction design
+Earlier in my internship, I helped in brainstorming different ways to visualize data on the [Natural Resource Revenue Data website](https://revenuedata.doi.gov/), which is the data website that the ONRR team manages. Under the Explore data page, I helped design concepts for cards that will allow users to easily compare data between different states and regions. Near the end of my internship, I was able to redesign the [style guide](https://w8tuba.axshare.com/#id=8t2gzn&p=new_styles&g=1) of the ONRR website, including colors, fonts, and other UI elements. After creating the guide, I created prototypes for the [homepage](https://w8tuba.axshare.com/#id=fnhupi&p=home__template_&g=1), [contact page](https://w8tuba.axshare.com/#id=jbjfzs&p=contact__material_ui_&g=1), and [reporter checklist page](https://w8tuba.axshare.com/#id=vjdxod&p=checklist__material_ui_&g=1) that showcase basic visual design and information architecture.
+
+Style tile:
+![Style tile with color scheme for onrr.gov](./onrr-style-01.jpg)
+
+## Favorite part
+Although my internship was completely virtual, I enjoyed getting to know everyone on the ONRR team. Everyone is so welcoming and willing to teach me more about the process of developing a live, open-source government product. Whenever I went onto their conference calls for sync ups, they always included me in the conversation. I would especially like to thank Shannon McHarg and Lindsay Goldstein for being amazing mentors, as well as Annie Persson for being the best co-intern! I am incredibly thankful for everything that they have taught me and for giving me the opportunity to really dive deep into the process of user experience.
+
+## What’s next
+UX/UI Design is definitely on my radar; I am excited to take what I learned from this internship and use my skills in future projects!