The last day was sadly the most uneventful day. We started off the day not doing much as Greyson had a couple of standard meetings he had to attend. Greyson then was able to set up a meeting for us to talk to the Business Manager of the gaming side of Lenovo. He talked about the coordination of selling millions of units of computers. We then took a while to pack up all of the hardware that we tested over the two week period.
Finally we said our goodbyes as Greyson let us have a half day as our last day. We gave everyone their gifts that was able to volunteer their time to us. Here is the last picture of our trip.
A college intern, Brad, is on the far left Greyson is next to him and Naomi is in the middle.
Day 7 began rather slowly, especially for Felipe. While we initially didn’t have anything to do, we were eventually given emails that people would receive if there was a security threat detected on their network. We looked through each one, and then helped Brett write a brief synopsis of the email and any errors that we found. Jack also played around with an eye tracker that Greyson had given us, which was quite interesting to watch, as it allows everyone around you to see where you are looking on the screen.
I mean you can’t really see it here, but there is a little grey bubble indicated where Jack is looking.
After finishing that short project, the representative from Medion came in. He is from Germany, and actually arrived a few days ago, but he brought us interns some German candy, theoretically from Germany.
Caramel covered in dark chocolate (Left) and a mix of lots of different Haribo products (Right).
After sitting around for a bit, Felipe finally decided to show up to work, and we began some real work. Greyson came over and talked to us about what would probably be “the most important thing we did during this internship”. While he did also say that that might not be totally true, it was going to be important. Our task was to look at the current version of Lenovo Vantage Gaming, which is on all of the Lenovo Legion computers. The little battery icon in the bottom right of the screen is a actually a Vantage toolbar, on both versions of the app. However, Greyson (and perhaps others) wanted to know if we thought that it should be different on the gaming version, and if so, what should be different. So, we looked at the current version, and started brainstorming in a group.
Now, everyone knows that you can’t brainstorm effectively if you haven’t eaten, so a little while after starting our research, we headed out to get some pizza. The pizza place was actually right next to the Tropical Smothie Cafe that we got lunch at yesterday. The slices that we got were huge, and I mean huge, while the drinks, well, they were just normal sized.
Here we are, just eating some pizza.
After returning from lunch, our brainstorming and creating mock ups of the toolbar continued. We finished the presentation by about 15:00, and headed down to the far corner of the second floor to present. We ended up presenting to Greyson and a new college intern named Brad. I would say the presentation went quite well, and Greyson liked the work we had done. After that, our penultimate 7th day was over.
Today was more of a low–key day. Jono, Felipe, Jack, and I all arrived at around 9:00am, give-or-take a few minutes. We all sat down and were logging onto the wifi when we were called into a meeting with Greyson. By the time we arrived at the conference room he was in, he had already started his conference call with his coworkers in China. The meeting was a Scrum meeting meaning Greyson and his colleagues were reviewing the backlog for all of the upcoming tasks and organizing them into sprints which are the tasks currently being worked on by the team in China. After the meeting, Greyson informed us about agile development and gave us two tasks. The first task was to do our own research on agile development, and the second task was to research how Apple’s new Sign-in with Apple software would work, a challenging task to say the least. Feeling a little humorous, Greyson jokingly said he wanted us to complete an actual working prototype of Sign-in With Apple by the end of the day knowing there would be little chance we would be able to fulfill his request. We all understood that he was joking, but we just couldn’t let the opportunity for a prank pass. We immediately started working on our tasks, and upon completion, we began to research how to write a program that would simulate the Sign-in With Apple software.
We started this work at 11:30am and completed it at 3:45pm. Jono, our team’s most knowledgeable computer programmer, successfully simulated theSign-in With Apple software code and even programmed the application to send emails, with attachments, using only the Python programming language. Once we told Greyson about what we had completed, he laughed it off thinking we were pulling his leg; however, once we showed him the code and had him run through the program himself, he realized that we were not joking. In the end, Greyson said how impressed he was with Jono’s programming skills. Even Greyson’s coworker from Germany, Nicholas, agreed with his assessment. While we all contributed to gathering the information for the two tasks, it was definitely Jono who received the gold medal today.
Our fifth day at Lenovo started as usual with a meeting with Greyson. He ran us through our schedule for the day and sent us on our way. Our first activity was a presentation from the UXD team (User Experience Design). They walked us through the entire UXD process, from the realization of an issue, the ideation of a solution, all the way to publishing that solution to the consumers. To get us in the zone for designing, they introduced a fun activity called Squiggle Birds. In this mini project, each person would draw some completely random squiggles on a sheet of paper and pass it to the person on our left. That person would then have to make the squiggles into a bird through whatever means necessary. At first, it was tough to make abstract lines resemble the flying animal, but with some persistence, we succeeded.
During this meeting, Mrs. Jones stopped by to check in on us! Greyson then gave her a tour of where we were working and the building. We finished up our meeting with the UXD team and returned to our desk to finish up our presentations and go to lunch.
Once we got back, Ray Chen, the gaming UX designer from our second day at Lenovo, interviewed us about how we use technology at school. To end the day, we presented our powerpoints from last week. These ranged from our reviews of new Legion gaming hardware to bug testing of Lenovo’s migration assistant.
We started off the day as we always do, with a quick debrief of the day ahead and a couple minutes to gather ourselves before the day started.
Our first task was to explore a program that is still in beta, or still in the making. The program was to migrate all of the files on one computer to another computer. The target market was for new computers so that it is easy to switch your files through a cloud rather than through a hard drive or going back and having to re-download everything you had on the old computer. What he wanted us to do was to test the program and take notes on anything wrong or anything that would be confusing to a non tech savvy person. We were able to figure out some great things to really help with the user-friendliness of the program such as it seemed that we were sending files to the old computer when in reality we were pulling files to the new computer.
The next thing we were able to do was talk to one of the project members of the A.I. team. We got to explore the evolution of A.I. and how Lenovo was trying to use it on future projects. We found that they mainly focus on A.I. around the eye and what the eye likes to do.
Then, our boss, Greyson, took us on a special tour of a part of the building very limited people have access to. He told us all about how they take all the other companies executives who are visiting through this part of the building. It included a very large display of many monumental products that they have created along the way of this building company. We even got to see one of the very first computers that they ever made which is crazy to see how the times have changed.
Today started out just like the last with everyone arriving at or a little after 9:00 while getting our devices connected to the internet and waiting for Greyson to give us our tasks for the day. Unlike yesterday which was relaxing due to the “Hardware Testing”, today we were given tasks left and right. Our first task included learning if two pairs of accessories, which consisted of a k500 keyboard and an m500 mouse, would use and connect to the same software as the beta version of Legion’s very own version of Vantage which, for the sake of avoiding a tongue twister, I will call Legion’s Vantage Beta. We all tested the accessories by plugging them into two different computers and checking Legion’s Vantage Beta to see if they were able to be manipulated through it. Upon discovering that the keyboard and mouse used different software than Legion’s Vantage Beta we began to dissect the different features of each software, all the while we created a powerpoint presentation which included screenshots of the differences, notes on any bugs or errors we found, and any personal suggestions of what we think would improve both pieces of software.
After completing our first task Greyson mentioned that there was a Lenovo Software Showcase that was going to be taking place at 2:00 which we would all have to leave at 1:30 for. On top of this news, Greyson also wanted us to prepare two top-of-the-line computers for the showcase meaning that not only would we have to work fast so we could get the updates done in time (it was 12:15 at this point) but we also had to budget in time for the best lunch so far… a not so sketchy Chipotle.
By the time we returned to the office we only had 20 minutes to finish any updates that we might have left and put the computers back into their original cases which we finished quickly enough so that we had a few minutes of free time playing VR. When 1:30 finally rolled around we all had our 2 computers set and ready to go and we had everything else packed up when Greyson informed us that the showcase was on Lenovo’s second campus 10 minutes away inside building 8! Not only did we have to find this other campus, park, and set up the table in 30 minutes, but we also had to decide who was driving with who and who would take the computers with them to the showcase as Greyson said that after 3:00 we were all free to leave for the day. I decided to go with Jono as Felipe and Jack both drove separately and my father needs to use the car for work so the obvious solution to the organizational issue was that I would carry the computers and carpool with Jono. This all seemed like a good plan however it went poorly fairly quickly. The first issue wasn’t so much an issue as it was an awkward situation as Jono and I, both obviously interns to anyone around us, had to walk by the front desk and out the main entrance carrying two state-of-the-art computers totaling probably over $1,000. Luckily for us, no one asked any specific questions as to why two high schoolers were leaving with such valuable equipment.
Me, not so stealthily, leaving Lenovo for the showcase with the very expensive equipment.
The second issue was that once we finally found parking at lot 8, we were able to find Jack Todd but Felipe and Greyson were nowhere in sight. After Jono gave Felipe a call, we soon learned that, apparently, the showcase was actually going on in building 6. At this point it was 1:53 and the three of us were panicking trying to return to our cars so we could drop off the computers in time and after a few wrong turns, we found Greyson waiting outside for us and Jono dropped me off so that I could run in and set everything up while he parked. By the time that we had finished setup, I looked at my watch and realized we had arrived with 1 minute to spare. The rest of the day’s events were relatively uneventful as we all went around to the different tables at the showcase learning about the various pieces of software being showcased. Jono, Felipe, and Jack left not long after 3:00 but my parents were running late so I ended up staying until the end, 4:00. Overall, we all had a fun and productive day with various ups and downs. I think we all are excited about what the days ahead will bring.
Our second day at Lenovo started off a bit differently than our first day. Mainly, we arrived at 9:00 am instead of 8:30. This was quite nice, since I at least could finally wake up late-ish. Upon arrival, Felipe, Jack, and I sat around in the front lobby for a few minutes waiting for Greyson to come down and get us. Apparently Brett had arrived a while earlier and was already up on the third floor.
After we were brought up to the third floor, our main job of the day began. Playing video games. I mean, hardware testing. We were given a Lenovo Legion gaming laptop to unbox, take screenshots of, and test the limits of. We also used a Lenovo Windows MR headset to test out the VR capabilities of the laptop. We spent pretty much the whole morning testing the laptop along with another, different gaming laptop.
We went out to a somewhat sketchy Jersey Mike’s for lunch, and then came back and continued testing.
In the last 1 hour of our day at Lenovo, we met with Ray Chen, a person who works at UX at Lenovo. He told us about all the different ways that Lenovo and other companies can get information about what people think about their products as well as how they are actually used. It was quite an interesting presentation, and it was a good way to end our second day at Lenovo after spending the rest of the time at our desks.
Today marked the start of our Lenovo work experience program. In the morning, we met our host for the two weeks, Mr. Greyson Davis and he gave us a tour of the floor we would be working on. Then, we were given our first project at Lenovo. For Jack and I, a research project of Team SoloMid, an eSports organization that recently partnered with Lenovo.
For Brett and Jono, a report of the Beta Vantage program, one of Lenovo’s software applications for their new products. We separated and worked diligently on our research before reconvening with each other and Greyson later in the day. We presented our findings and Greyson explained how his job works.
To finish off the day, since it was Greyson’s birthday, we had some cake to celebrate. Happy birthday Greyson!
