69. How UX Design Interns Learn in Practice?—Examining the Internship Experience Thorough the Community of Practice Lens

Learning of UX designers during internship has not received the attention it deserves in design education research. This study is based on a social learning theory of ‘Community of Practice’ and ‘Landscapes of Practice’ as a lenses for examining the workplace learning of UX design interns. This paper reports findings from a study conducted with final year UX design students doing their internship in several types of software companies in India. Central argument of this paper is that looking at learning of UX designers from the ‘Landscape of Practice (LoP)’ perspective can help better prepare novice UX professionals locate themselves in the complex landscape of organizational practices, and it has a potential of having more conscious workplace learning and developing professional identity ‘by design’ than developing it ‘by chance’.