Co-op at Hydro One
12 months, May 2021-May 2022
Microsoft Office Suite
Figma
Miro
Team
10 people within the change management and culture team.
Tools
In May 2021, I started my UX co-op work term at Hydro One (H1) in HR with the Change Management and Culture team. I initially started working remotely, though as restrictions let up, I was able to move to a hybrid working environment where I would commute to the Trinity Square building in downtown Toronto. During my time at H1, I was both a student as well as an in-house UX consultant. Overall, there was a large variety of work to get me out of my comfort zone while also allowing me to provide support to my team. I was able to contribute to 4 different organizational change management projects, gained experience working with a variety of management styles in a complex working environment, experienced what it would be like working from home and in a hybrid work environment, and contributed to a wide variety of work that was both UX and not UX focussed. Unfortunately, because of the sensitivity and need for confidentiality with my work at Hydro One, I can’t go into specific details.
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Understanding organizational hierarchy design and how that affects working dynamics for UX.
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Learning and experiencing change management and how it collaborates, contributes, and co-produces with UX.
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Handling ambiguity and complexity to conduct guerilla UX research to empathize, define, and ideate.
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Collaborating closely to work with a variety of management styles and additional teams in a complex work environment.
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Understanding and contributing to the transferability of work, especially with onboarding and passing on key components where people’s skills might not be as specialized in UX or graphic design.
Takeaways
