FOX INTERNSHIP
FOX INTERNSHIP
Role
Product Design Intern
Timeline
11 weeks (including 1 month extension due to outstanding performance as an intern)
For
Product and Project Managers in 7+ Fox Divisions (Fox Sports, Fox News, Fox Entertainment, etc.)
Tools
Figma
UserTesting
00. Teaser of the Deliverable
Because every blockbuster starts with an epic trailer, right?
01. Admin Portal
How might we create reusable design patterns that can improve our onboarding and offboarding experiences while serving broader design needs?
What is the Admin Portal?
Background
Enterprise platform managing 40,000+ external vendors and contractors across Fox
My focus was on Users (PMs), Groups, and Application access management
Project goal: Streamline onboarding/offboarding experience
Core Workflow
Production Managers (PMs) request application access for external team members
Access Control System:
Applications = Specialized software for film/TV production
Groups = Gateway to specific applications
Users = Added to groups to gain application access
02. Problem Framing
How did we find ourselves in this problem space of needing better onboarding and offboarding processes?
Vendor management bottlenecks creating revenue loss & security risks
Users spent 10+ hours weekly managing vendors, resulting in delays and multitasking during meetings which hindered productivity.
As a result of these delays, specifically for onboarding ones, vendors without key app access caused 2-week production setbacks, risking milions of dollars of revenue loss. On the other hand, deactivation delays heightened security risks by allowing former vendors access to sensitive data, while ongoing use of costly applications strained finances.
DISCOVERY
How I dealt with ambiguity
As someone completely new to how a studio operated behind the scenes, I had to quickly grasp a complex ecosystem of vendors, content houses, and multiple stakeholder types.
After studying the products’ workflows intensively and asking lots of questions, I got a much better idea. To focus our team's efforts effectively, I conducted a heuristic evaluation of the portal's user onboarding and offboarding flows, identifying key friction points and usability issues.
SPECIFIC PAIN POINT 1 - HEAVY ON THE RECALL
Users struggle to quickly recognize which groups to assign users to, relying heavily on recall or backtracking.
In the admin portal, there are > 300 groups, and requests specified assigning users to a particular application. However, due to inconsistent naming conventions, there’s no clear relationship between group names and application names.
ADDITIONAL PROBLEM CONTEXT VIA MODERATED TESTING
Hacky Workarounds
💡 Key User Research Insight: Users word choice revealed their mental models
PMs had developed two workarounds for group assignments:
Using external notepads to track group names
"Mirroring" - copying group settings from existing vendor accounts with similar roles
Problem: The process is lengthy and unintuitive with lots of going back and forth between the two, breaking established system patterns
Old Designs
Users mirroring an old vendor’s group permissions to add new users to it
ADDITIONAL PROBLEM CONTEXT VIA USER INTERVIEWS
Additional Insights from the Community
After conducting additional user interviews, other frustrations surfaced too, including the fact that there was unintuitive wording for group assignments, and frequently used features were also hidden. These were all things I took into consideration for my re-design.
Went above and beyond to fix other UX frustrations that would improve the group assignment experience and beyond
SPECIFIC PAIN POINT 2 - INEFFICIENT AND DISORGANIZED
It takes too many steps to onboard new users or deactivate old ones
Of the ~10 hours, users spent 3-4 hours per week manually adding vendors one-by-one between Slack and the portal as there could be hundreds of them
For projects which involved 100+ vendors (frequent), this created significant bottlenecks in project kickoff
15% error rate in user provisioning due to:
Scattered onboarding requests across multiple Slack channels
Missed follow-up messages for vendor access
Manual cross-referencing between systems
Why aren’t users using filters to narrow the vendor list down?
There are filters available, so why aren't users using them to narrow down the vendors to a single view? After all, the vendors are organized in specific categories.
And so I asked…
How might we help users quickly access vendor lists without manual name-by-name searches?
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Comparing with other products to keep filters simple yet powerful
Key research areas:
Deep dive into enterprise vs customer filtering needs to seek out what was the appropriate level of complexity and power for our filter panel
Competitive analysis of enterprise solutions
Card sorting to optimize filter hierarchy
My focus was on creating an intuitive yet powerful filtering system that could surface exact vendor combinations while remaining flexible for different use cases.
ITERATION
Narrowing down based on principles & constraints
While there were many iterations of filters that I designed, I relied on design principles and constraints to narrow down to the best option, which ended up being the panels that slide out from the left
Key Considerations:
Users needed maximum table visibility for decision-making
Constraint as system heavily relied on pop-up modules that also needed to accommodate filters
Design system already utilized sliding panels
Solution Selection: I chose sliding filter panels because they:
Preserved crucial table real estate
Worked seamlessly within existing pop-up constraints
Leveraged familiar design patterns
CARD SORTING
Different workflows resulted in little consensus
I also conducted card sorting to determine the optimal order of filters, revealing minimal similarity among participants' groupings beyond the first two filters. This highlighted the need to prioritize key filters while providing flexibility for users to customize their filtering experience, ensuring adaptability to diverse mental models.
STAKEHOLDER RELATIONSHIPS & GETTING FEEDBACK
Validating concepts
To ensure that my team would be spending our time and effort solving the right problem, I made sure to validate my ideas and get stakeholder buy-in. This is just one of the many slide decks I made during my internship, presenting data and using good storytelling to get people as high-ranking as Vice-Presidents to be on board with my ideas.
I received a lot of feedback, some of which are detailed below. I had to discern which ones were good UX recommendations and which designs were worth pushing for.
03. Design Solutions ✨
What are the details, changes and improvements with the new design?
Group Assignment & Mirroring: What has changed?
Group assignment can be done within a streamlined flow without needing to reference other platforms or pages
Surfaced Critical Functions:
Moved group assignment from hidden Actions menu to primary view
Added two clear options: mirror groups or manual search
Enhanced Visual Hierarchy:
Redesigned tab navigation with stronger visual indicators
Made current section instantly recognizable for users
This reorganization prioritized frequently-used features while improving overall navigation clarity.
New Core Features
Ensuring efficiency while meeting security standards - being careful not to add users to groups they’re not supposed to be in
While this solution made it much easier to copy groups from an existing user to a new one, this did not have to mean that it would also be easier to add users to groups they aren’t authorized to have access to. Via close collaboration with my PM, we uncovered opportunities to streamline security validations without compromising our strict access controls. We developed an intelligent pre-validation system that automatically flags potential violations without causing too much friction to the user experience.
ITERATION
Introducing design changes at the right time
I initially set the mirroring feature as the default to save users time, but this overwhelmed them due to their reluctance to change and other design updates. Moving it to a prominent button allowed users to adopt it at their own pace, with the option to make it the default later as they became more familiar.
ITERATION
Bringing clarity with better copy
💡 Key Research Insight : PMs using the portal often lacked technical knowledge of film production terms, leading to confusion from inconsistent terminology.
Solution:
Standardized language across projects
Simplified technical jargon
Refined copy for new mirroring feature to ensure clarity
Tested various phrasings to maximize understanding
What else is in store?
New Design: What has changed?
Clearer information hierarchy with reusable patterns that can exist across all modules
To create distinction between the search bar and filters, I made sure that the filters would have its own distinct panel at the side, reusing an existing panel component that existed in the design system. This was done after experimenting with several different ways to show filters.
It was also to essential that whatever filters I created for the Users, Groups and Applications Panel could be used on other modules in the Admin Portal too.
ITERATIONS & CONSTRAINTS
Working around constraints to deliver value
I initially aimed to create an internal dashboard where users could instantly view vendors needing requests, reducing reliance on filters. However, due to time and resource constraints, I pivoted to a simpler solution after discussing with my PM.
I developed an automated email system that pre-filters vendor lists, allowing users to click a button and directly access the relevant vendors in the admin portal. This solution integrates with an enhanced filter panel, making it easier for users to manage onboarding and offboarding tasks.
ITERATIONS & CONSTRAINTS
The pop-up that couldn’t be removed (for now)
Through my UX audit, I discovered pop-ups were creating friction, particularly confusing first-time users. However, in discussions with the product and engineering teams, I learned we needed to prioritize other critical issues I had identified.
This added complexity to the challenge, as I now needed to ensure any proposed pop-up improvements would also work seamlessly on mobile devices. After several iterations and user tests, I refined a solution that balanced both technical constraints and user needs.
04. Impact & Results
How did I make a difference?
Making a difference
The redesigned admin portal transformed Fox's vendor management workflow, creating measurable improvements in operational efficiency and compliance. By collaborating closely with the data science team, we tracked key performance indicators that validated our design decisions.
Our streamlined filtering system significantly reduced the time administrators spent searching for relevant vendor information. The introduction of the mirroring function revolutionized the group assignment process, eliminating redundant work for managing similar vendor profiles. .
05. Reflections
What did this internship made me realize?
⚖️ It’s all about balance.
Whether it be within design or outside of design. Outside of design, my approach combines passionate advocacy for better design practices with strategic stakeholder management. I have learned to pick my battles wisely and compromise where necessary. Above all, I have learnt that creativity is not confined to just my work. Sometimes, to engage stakeholders, I’ll need to think of out-of-the-box methods too.
💻 The constraints that come with Product Design make it more exciting.
In just a few weeks, I’ve grown significantly as a budding designer in tech and discovered that a career in product design is deeply intriguing, fulfilling and sustainable. Working in the real-world industry has taught me the value of adaptability—navigating constraints and finding creative solutions is incredibly rewarding. Most importantly, seeing the tangible impact of my work on people’s lives is an experience I’ll always cherish.
🗣️Don’t just ask questions, ask good questions!
Both within work and outside of work. Within work, good design stems from being prepared with the right questions - enough to undestand the user’s needs, but not so much till it might lead to information overload and inefficiency. Outside of work, thoughtful questions help build stronger relationships, which I believe are essential for job satisfaction and gaining stakeholder trust—both personally and professionally.
Surprise 🎁
While I only presented on the Admin Portal project, I actually worked on 3 key projects during my internship. In all three, I balanced technical UX challenges with a premium on figuring out information architecture.
Entertainment Technology Department website: Delivered project from 0-1
Media Asset Management Redesign: Redesigned the Spaces page to make it more intuitive to find media ssets
This case study focuses specifically on the Admin Portal project.
Quick snapshot of another project I led: Media Asset Management Redesign
06. Testimonials
You may not know me yet, but here’s a glimpse of what it’s like to work with me.
“The way you present issues gets even the C-suite fully engaged—that’s storytelling at its finest.
Product & Services Director
“We still talk about how much you improved our team even after you left. Thank you for the kind letters … it really meant a lot to me that you noticed those things.”
Product Manager
“You reminded me of how much I really appreciate and enjoy UX design!”
Product Manager
