Name: Yoyo Zhao
Class Year: 2025
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Luoyang, China
Internship Organization: Baidu
Internship Title: UX research Intern
Location: Beijing, China
What's happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!
This summer I worked as a UX researcher at Baidu company, Mobile Ecological Business Group(meg). One of my primary responsibilities has been to assist with various research projects. This involves designing surveys, conducting usability tests, facilitating user interview, and presenting formal report to PM.
I’ve learned how to gather and analyze data to uncover user needs, pain points, and behaviors. I’ve also had the opportunity to use a variety of UX research tools and techniques. From eye tracker to AI data analysis software, each tool helps streamline the research process and provides valuable insights.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I applied for this internship because I am deeply interested in understanding human behavior and cognition. UX research aligns with my academic background and allows me to explore how psychological principles can be applied in real-world settings. This internship provides an excellent opportunity to gain hands-on experience in UX research, helping me to explore potential career paths before I graduate. It also offers the chance to develop valuable skills, such as data analysis, user-centered design, and effective communication, which will be beneficial in any future career I choose to pursue.
What has been the biggest challenge you have faced at your internship?
The biggest challenge I have faced during my internship at Baidu is working with traditional methods to gather user feedback. After analyzing survey data, I make follow-up calls to users who provided insufficient information or are part of our test group that experienced updates ahead of the general user base.
However, many users do not answer these calls, which I completely understand since I might do the same in their position. Even when users do pick up, they often still provide insufficient information. To address this, I have had to design various strategies to encourage them to share more detailed feedback. This includes using open-ended questions, offering choices like A or B, and sometimes sharing my own experiences with our product to inspire more detailed responses. It has been quite challenging to extract valid information through traditional methods like phone calls, but I am continually adapting my approach to improve the effectiveness of these interactions.
What is something you have learned from your internship that you didn't expect?
One important lesson I learned from my internship is not to easily trust what others say without verifying it first. During my time at Baidu, many users claimed that their accounts were being restricted by the platform, resulting in fewer readers for their articles because they were using AI tools to assist with writing. Given the volume of similar feedback, I initially believed these claims and addressed them in a presentation to the Product Manager (PM). However, the PM informed me that our platform does not restrict accounts based on AI usage; in fact, we encourage it as we have our own AI writing product.
This discrepancy led me to collaborate with the product teams to investigate further. We found that most of the users who reported this issue had not actually used the AI tool. Through additional user interviews, I discovered that misinformation was spreading within user group chats. Initially, a few users who experienced a decline in readership speculated that the platform was restricting their accounts due to AI usage and shared this belief in their groups. This rumor quickly gained traction, leading more users to adopt and spread it, even if they hadn't used the AI tool themselves.
Some users simply forgot whether they had used the AI tool because they wrote many articles and posted them on different platforms. Others believed that the platform identify their articles as AI-written articles by mistake. This experience is really instructive, as it shows how easily so many users, including myself, can accept others' opinions without critical thinking and verification.