Intern - Product Design

HARMAN International is a global technology company developing audio, lifestyle, automotive, and digital transformation solutions. The Product Design Intern will support product teams through competitive and user research focused on music discovery, streaming, and short-form content, while presenting actionable findings and recommendations. The role also involves usability testing, trend analysis, user feedback programs, and maintaining research documentation.

Responsibilities:

• Work as an embedded member of the team: join standups, design and product marketing discussions and product reviews, and contribute ideas as a working member of the group
• Track and analyze competitors and adjacent products to identify feature gaps, emerging trends, and unmet needs in the category
• Maintain a competitive tracker the team can use week-to-week, covering feature releases, notable launches, and shifts in how competitors position themselves
• Recruit and interview users in the 16 to 25 age range, with support from the product and marketing teams, to surface authentic language, listening habits, and unmet needs around music discovery and sharing
• Support structured usability and concept testing on new features and prototypes: help run sessions, capture qualitative and quantitative feedback, and turn it into concrete recommendations the team can act on within a development sprint
• Investigate how the target audience responds to curation and algorithmic recommendation, and feed what you find into feed and curation discussions
• Study visual and interaction trends across music, social, and related apps, and share what you find so our product and design teams stay current with what feels credible to a Gen Z audience
• Listen to public conversation about products in our category across Reddit, Discord, TikTok comments, and app store reviews, and flag the themes worth the team’s attention
• Support user feedback programs alongside the community and R&D teams: help draft survey questions, track incoming feedback and bug reports, and keep a running log of recurring themes
• Keep the research repository usable: tag and organize interview notes, clips, and findings so the team can still find them after the internship ends
• Summarize findings regularly into short internal documents the team can act on week to week, and deliver a final write-up and presentation pulling together the full 12 weeks of insight
• Own one self-directed project: define a question about the product with your manager, run the research, and present your recommendation to the team

Requirements:

• Must be currently enrolled in a Bachelor's Degree program or higher at an accredited institution having completed their Sophomore year or later, taking at least one class in the semester/quarter before participation in the internship program, and returning to school for at least one semester upon completion of the internship program
• Must have a cumulative 3.0 GPA
• Genuine curiosity about consumer products and how people find, share, and talk about music
• Strong written communication: able to turn messy notes into a short, clear document that someone else can act on without a walkthrough
• Comfort talking to people you do not know, running an interview, and asking the follow-up question rather than accepting the first answer
• Organized and self-directed, able to manage several research threads at once with light supervision in a remote environment
• Comfortable working with survey results and simple data sets, and willing to report what the findings actually show, including when they are inconvenient
• Hands-on familiarity, as a user, with the platforms where music culture happens, including TikTok, Instagram, Discord, Reddit, and the major streaming services
• Discretion with confidential product, partner, and roadmap information
• This role allows for remote work and a candidate can be located anywhere in the United States
• This position allows for up to 20 hours per week, constituting a Part-Time Internship. Flexibility for more working hours is at the discretion and ability of the business unit
• Preferred degree program in business, marketing, design, human-computer interaction, communications, music business, or a related field
• Prior internship, coursework, or project experience in user research, product management, marketing, or design
• Practical exposure to research methods such as interviews, surveys, or usability testing
• Experience building an audience or creating content on a social platform, or moderating an online community
• Working knowledge of tools such as Figma, Notion, and survey or analytics platforms
• Fluency with AI tools and a habit of using them to work faster and better: synthesizing interview notes, drafting research summaries, and speeding up desk research
• A personal stake in music: musician, DJ, playlist curator, writer, or active participant in a scene