03/09/2026
Six weeks ago, Zehra Cemre Koç became the first intern at Noord see Lights.
And before she started, we had one question:
What project do you give an intern when, as a startup, you are doing a bit of everything yourself?
At Noord see Lights, there is never just one type of work.
One moment we are improving our designs.
The next we are answering emails, visiting a store, testing materials, working on our website, working on our design tool, or solving a problem we did not even know existed that morning.
At first, we thought finding a good internship assignment would be difficult.
But luckily it wasn’t.
The difficult part was figuring out what would actually help her grow.
We wanted Cemre to experience the full process, but we also wanted her to have enough freedom to discover what kind of work she enjoys.
So instead of preparing one fixed assignment, we came up with ten different projects she could choose from.
Some creative.
Some practical.
Some small.
Some much bigger.
Not because we expected her to do everything.
But because we wanted her to have room to move.
To explore.
To get stuck sometimes.
And to discover what kind of work gives her energy.
Because having an intern should not be about finding someone to do the things you do not want to do.
It should be about creating an environment in which someone can learn.
In the end, Cemre worked on two assignments: redesigning our presentation at The Maker Store and developing a new product.
Two projects that initially seemed separate, but are becoming part of the same story. Because that new product will launch first at The Maker Store.
So the question is no longer just:
What should the product look like?
It is also:
How should someone discover it?
What should they understand when they see it for the first time?
And how can the space around the product help tell that story?
In the end, her internship became much closer to how we actually work at Noord see Lights:
Designing a product is never only about the product.
It is about everything around it too.
We’re curious: if you could choose from 10 different projects as an intern, would you rather dive deep into one project or try out several different things?
