By Leila Ugincius

As she considered work opportunities for the summer – and careers overall – Faustina Koduah thought about the advice she would give to other Virginia Commonwealth University students.

“Build relationships with professionals early before you ‘need them,’” the senior said, “and don’t be afraid to take risks and go after what you want.”

Maybe one other thing, too – at least in Koduah’s case: Listen to your older brother.

Koduah, a Ghanaian-American first-generation college student from Northern Virginia, isn’t the first Ram in her family. It was Isaac, a VCU alum, who encouraged her to study information systems in the School of Business.

“And he was right,” Koduah said. “It’s a versatile field that opens doors to many career paths, but I’ve found my passion in UX and product design.”

User experience is focused on making websites, apps, games and other platforms functional and intuitive for audiences. This summer, Koduah embraced an internship opportunity with a company that knows something about UX – and about VCU: CoStar Group. She received support from VCU’s Internship Funding Program, which helps cover costs associated with summer internships.

Currently under construction at the intersection of Broad and Belvidere streets in Richmond, the CoStar Center for Arts and Innovation will blend the arts and other disciplines to explore solutions in digital, creative and economic realms. The Fortune 500 company is a global leader in real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces, and for Koduah, the summer was a chance to learn about UX from both a design and corporate perspective.

“I collaborated with project managers, engineers and senior designers to turn business goals into intuitive, user-friendly interfaces,” Koduah said.

This included using Figma, a collaborative web application for user interface design, to build and refine UI components. And she helped lead design proposals for internal tools using Object-Oriented UX – a methodology that promotes intuitive UX by envisioning content as objects – to improve workflows and efficiency.

Koduah also developed options for an updated logo for Scout, a custom mobile app for CoStar employees collecting data in the U.S., Canada, France, Spain and the United Kingdom. And she worked on designs for how employees doing research on commercial buildings could use artificial intelligence to dramatically accelerate their workflow when using Scout throughout the day.

At VCU, Koduah’s efforts have included support work for orientation and student transition programs, as well as serving as an Adobe student ambassador. Her own academic path was influenced by a trip to San Francisco with Management Leadership for Tomorrow, a nonprofit that supports college students and recent graduates of color by connecting them with employers. After speaking with a representative from Adobe, Koduah envisioned a career in design.

To pair with her business major, Koduah is minoring in visual effects in VCU’s School of the Arts – and while those skills weren’t crucial to her summer CoStar internship, her motion graphics expertise can certainly be incorporated into future UX design work.

For Koduah, the internship provided direct experience into how design drives real impact across teams – and the importance of focusing on the user.

“If you open an app and it’s super confusing, that’s bad UX,” she said. “If everything makes sense, looks cool and helps you do what you want fast, that’s good UX.”