How Computer Scientist Intern, Hai jung Hsu, is Transforming Adobe Sign Straight from Home

This year, Adobe is proud to welcome more than 700 interns across the globe for our first ever virtual internship program. To give you a peak into their internship, we’ll be featuring our Adobe Interns from across the business and across the world.

Every year, as the end of our intern season approaches, we host one of our flagship events—the Intern Project Expo, where interns share more about the exciting projects they’ve been working on. With our virtual internship this year, we had interns from across the world upload their projects into an online portal, where employees had a chance to review, comment and vote on some of their favorite projects.

This year, the intern project with the most votes belonged to Hai Jung Hsu, a Computer Scientist Intern on the Document Cloud team. Here’s more about Hai’s innovative project and his experience being an Adobe Intern.

Which University are you currently enrolled in and what attracted you to join Adobe?

I am currently enrolled in Brigham Young University. Prior to joining Adobe, I’ve always had this boundless appreciation for the convenience of the PDF format and Adobe Acrobat. In recent years, I was blown away by Adobe Sign when I used it through my insurance provider. So when Adobe showed up on campus during a career fair, I was excited. When I began interviewing, to be honest, I was a little concerned I would get sent to work with the Photoshop team! Luckily for me, I was beyond thrilled to accept an offer for the Document Cloud team.

Tell me a little more about your intern project and how you got started on it.

When I started, my manager actually offered me two routes to take my internship in. The first was to work with other interns and develop ideas that could potentially become a product in the future. Or, I could work on a team with Adobe employees to develop an ongoing project. Without hesitation, I chose to work on an ongoing project.

My project on the Adobe Sign team contributed to the accessibility and readability of key areas. I feel like I’ve been able to make an impact on signers being able to quickly read documents and sign.

What would you say led to the success of this project?

I was motivated to really shine a light on all the amazing work the Document Cloud team was doing, so as I created my presentation I made sure it was easy to understand and really told a story. As I outlined in my presentation, one of my goals was to, “Make my granny go ‘wow, this is so easy to use! Attaboy!!!’” It sounds silly, but I really think this played a big part in the success of my project. I wanted people—and not just a technical audience—to read my presentation and immediately understand what I was solving for.

How does it feel to win the Intern Project Expo?

I was super excited when I won, but I was also very surprised. This is mainly because Adobe has so many talented interns. I also browsed their projects in the Expo, and I was blown away by them. I’m so proud that I was able to highlight the amazing work my team is doing. It means a lot to me that people are recognizing this type of work.

How has it been like being a virtual intern? What has been your biggest takeaway?

It has been quite an interesting experience. Going into the program, I was a little nervous—the world is in such an unusual circumstance and I couldn’t help but think this was a major obstacle into my internship journey. But when I joined, it was great. The whole team has been amazing. I literally couldn’t ask for a better team to work with. I feel comfortable speaking up and sharing my concerns and opinions.

Now that I’m approaching the end of my internship, I feel it’s equipped me for the future. I’ve learned how important it is to integrate creativity into everything I do, which is probably my biggest takeaway. Not only that, but teamwork is crucial. You can have the best idea in the world, but if you don’t have a team who can help you develop it, or if your idea doesn’t resonate with people, you’ll have nothing. Honestly, my time at Adobe has taught me so much.

Be sure to check out more of our intern stories on the University page.