GoDaddy Internship
UX Design Internship
Usability Testing
Design Systems
Growth & Monetization
Team
AGI Core UX (Venture Home, Productivity, Monetization)
Timeline
May 2026 -
Aug 2026
Roles
UX Design Intern
Context
Working across surfaces on GoDaddy's platform, shipping interfaces and experiences.
The internship had three stated goals: ship measurable UX contributions across multiple product areas, build real proficiency in AI-assisted design workflows, and run full design-iteration cycles grounded in user testing. By the end, two flows were shipped and beating OKRs, a third was in production, and I'd run structured testing across three more surfaces.
Shipped flows that had
for purchased email credits, beating a 70% OKR
Systemized and designed
of the Single Plan Upgrade paywall designs.
Presented to
at the GoDaddy UX Collab Forum
Project 1: Email Activation w/ AI
I built an AI-driven flow that got 90%+ of purchased email credits activated.
For users of GoDaddy's brand new Airo AI Builder, a tool that allows creators and businesses to build their website with prompting, there were no paths into activating existing professional emails. The activation rate sat below the team's goal amongst users with purchased emails.
Email is a core product of GoDaddy, and for small businesses, a professional email address is an important way to build trust and establish credibility with their customers.
I designed, tested (with 12 testers), vibe-coded in Cursor, and shipped the flows with PMs and engineers to build email activation into the Airo experience.
Decision
Ship an Activate Email button and a post-publish modal, not just the stronger of the two
Reasoning
The modal catches the highest-intent moment, right after publishing.
The button serves everyone who isn't in that moment: someone returning later, or who dismissed the modal the first time.
Post-Publish Modal - activated after publishing a site.
Past the two shipped surfaces, I spent the second half of the internship on a harder, still-unresolved problem: teaching the AI agent itself when to offer this without it feeling like an interruption, and introducing key email functions into the new Airo hub.
Full Case Study
A 90%+ activation rate, the design process, iteration, and how it was presented:
Reach out to me at chrisshia09@gmail.com for the password.
Project 2: Bundle and Save
A new bundle checkout design had to earn trust before a single click.
Bundle and save, helping customers stack GoDaddy products into a discounted bundle at checkout, was about to be launched and was being refined as a new monetization strategy. Working under a senior designer's mentorship, I explored design patterns and ran the prototypes through Cursor and Lyssna across several rounds, focusing on indicating progress and signifying value early.
Early Explorations
Final Design
What user testing found
Users didn't fully grasp the concept of Bundle & Save
People liked seeing all their options in one place, but pricing felt confusing and the "bundle" framing itself wasn't landing. That sent the design back to basics - simplify the concept, provide information one step at a time, before polishing the visuals.
The version that shipped uses a step-by-step "progressive" reveal instead of an all-at-once comparison, one tool offered at a time, savings shown immediately, with real-feeling 3D iconography in GoDaddy's Antares design system for this surface. It's live in production today.
Final Shipped Designs [Layout and Illustration Variations]
Also at GoDaddy
Designed, tested, and researched, all in the Antares Design System.
Color Contrast Audit for Business Icons
New Navigation Rail Component
Usability, Accessibility, Design Systems
Unified Navigation Rail Accessibility Audit
Two structured usability tests (13 users total) on GoDaddy's redesigned account nav, plus a WCAG AA contrast and focus-state audit across venture icons to inform future component development in GoDaddy's Antares Design System.
Research | Presented to UX Director
Q2 Venture Home Baseline Testing
Reviewed 7 UserTesting.com sessions against a pre-established framework (task completion, ease of use, confidence) to establish the baseline the team uses to judge Q3 and Q4 progress.
2-Day Hackathon
Airo Guard: AI Agent Security
Designed a trust-and-verification tool for AI agents visiting small-business sites, built on GoDaddy's real Agent Name Service standard, translating a technical trust problem into plain-language verdicts and one-click controls for non-technical business owners.
Systems | Guidelines
21 Single Plan Upgrade Paywall Variations
GoDaddy's upsell paywall was inconsistent across treatments and screen sizes. I designed 21 variations across three breakpoints and wrote the guidelines, content priority, breakpoint rules, handoff docs, so future treatments stay consistent.
Proposed SPU Redesign
Reflection
What I learned
This showed up on two different surfaces above. Both times, the fix was going back to the concept.
SPU was 21 variations across 3 breakpoints. The challenge was writing rules that would hold up for treatments I hadn't designed yet, in varying scenarios and products.
Continuing to build confidence presenting to senior stakeholders, and continuing to develop visual craft within the design system.
