What is the corporate culture like at RIM?

The culture is most definitely very casual. Everyone is very friendly and outgoing, and they treat their co-op students like any other full-time worker; I found that very valuable since I wasn’t given “easier” or less interesting work. However, this also means that they have a certain expectation of your abilities.

What kind of projects did you work on?

I was on the User Experience Design team as a designer and got to work on quite a range of different projects.  In terms of designing interfaces and software, I created mock-ups for upcoming products, as well as re-designs for products that performed poorly in our team’s usability tests.  I also worked on some internal projects such as personas and a style guide for the BlackBerry Smartphone user interface.

What did you like most about the job?

I really enjoyed the diversity in my position.  The way our team worked is that we acted somewhat like internal consultants within RIM, helping other groups with our design and usability expertise and skills.  This allowed me to get a very good picture of how the product lifecycle works, as well as an opportunity to work on a variety of things such as designing for disabilities, device and desktop software. The people in my team were also great to work with, as they were very supportive of my ideas and designs. I had a very approachable team lead, to whom I was able to voice concerns and receive consultation.