Internship LEGO
Product technology design intern, bridging the digital and physical play
Design Internship
LEGO product technology
Duration
1 year
Products
LEGO Boost
LEGO Train
DUPLO Train
Keywords
Playfull professional design, multi-disciplinary teamwork, economically feasible design
LEGO INTERNSHIP
I did my internship at LEGO Product technology Concept Design & Platforms. My function in this context was creating potential future opportunities and communicate these to the play themes with prototypes for user-testing, feasibility testing and communicating the concept. I also worked a lot on making experience prototypes for the different play themes to test and communicate the user experience. (Due to confidentiality I can’t be specific on the concepts I’ve been working on).
“Geert has a very friendly and open nature and appears to have a genuine passion for developing products and software. Some of the prototypes Geert has made while at LEGO have been particularly complex and used tools that were not intended for the task; however, he embraced the challenge and gave brilliant results.” - Oliver Wallington, Concept Manager Specialist, Concept Design & Platforms, LEGO Systems A/S
Concept development
We did develop future concepts and I learned how to communicate them to both the design team but also to possible clients. Our department oversaw front-end research for an upcoming product, which I organised user-tests for. During this time, I was also a contact person for some collaborating companies and organisations.
Experience prototyping
During my internship, I have made several prototypes that were used during user-tests and based on these tests products that are going to be out there will be different. Experience prototyping was a great way to have a common language between engineers, management, and designers. For one project I made a prototype on a bigger scale because it was too much engineering effort to make it smaller. This was a great way to discuss this concept at an experience level.
Defining brick behaviour platform
We developed a framework together with firmware engineers and designers for how future electrical LEGO elements will fit in the digital platform. How will a distance sensor behave when it will be directly connected to a motor? What kind of data types are going to be there, that needed to work with every imaginable future LEGO? The challenge was to design it in a simple, yet scalable way that works stand-alone.