Building real tools for real buyers: Inside our Oslo summer internship
Four summer interns in Oslo spent their break fixing one of the most stressful parts of house hunting. Here is how Stine, Isabelle, Rami, and Ingvild turned complex real estate friction into a simpler experience for Norwegian home buyers.
Beyond the synthetic classroom project
House hunting comes with plenty of admin. Traditionally, booking a viewing on FINN meant being redirected to external broker websites, filling in duplicate forms, and trying to keep track of notes across various apps.
This summer, our Oslo team set out to fix that. Stine Knutsen (UX), Isabelle Røed Lampl (Full Stack), Rami Chumber (Dev), and Ingvild Utvik (Full Stack) took on Vend in Real Estate to build a streamlined viewing experience directly inside the FINN platform.
"It was great to see that our project was not just an artificial exercise, but something actual users and brokers needed," says Ingvild.
The team built a native signup form on FINN that auto-fills saved user details, keeping buyers in one place. Alongside the form, they created an interactive viewing dashboard. The tool lets buyers manage upcoming viewings, write notes, and rate features of a house on their phone while walking through an open house.
What happens when code meets the real world
Moving from university assignments to a live marketplace comes with a few surprises. School projects often start with a blank canvas, but real systems require working alongside existing codebases and balancing multiple stakeholder needs at once.
"In school, you are usually looking for one right answer," says Rami. "In the real world, every technical decision comes with trade-offs you have to weigh."
For the developers on the team, the experience meant working full-stack and connecting their new signup feature to external agency systems.
"Being invited to join user research sessions with Stine gave us a clear picture of who we were coding for," says Isabelle. "It completely changed how we approached the technical implementation," Ingvild added.
For Stine, who served as the sole UX designer on the project, the summer was an exercise in driving design decisions independently.
"Being the only designer on the team pushed me to take initiative early on and learn exactly when to bring ideas back to the wider team for feedback."
Lessons learned and looking ahead
Working on live software gives immediate feedback on what matters in an engineering career. Beyond learning how to navigate massive codebases, the team discovered how crucial team culture, trust, and autonomy are when shipping product updates.
Here are a few key takeaways the team shared as they wrap up their summer with us:
Designing for real people: Moving from theoretical assignments to solving actual user friction makes the work far more rewarding.
Navigating existing systems: Learning to read and build on top of complex, established codebases is where real growth happens.
Cross-functional teamwork: When developers join user research, and designers collaborate directly with devs, the final product is sharper.
Autonomy builds confidence: Having the freedom to pick tech tools and test ideas speeds up learning.
As the team returns to their studies and master's degrees, they leave behind real features that make house hunting simpler for thousands of users across Norway.
Interested in building practical tools that millions of people use every day? Explore our open roles and early career opportunities across our Nordic tech teams.