UX Design - How To Get Started (For Beginners)

hey everybody in this video I'm going to take you through some really tangible steps that you can take today to get into UX design but if that's the title I'm Brittany from AJ and smart and this video is going to be perfect for anybody who's thinking about getting into UX design maybe you're making a career change maybe you're coming straight out of high school and you're trying to figure out what direction to take I'm gonna take you through four super simple steps that you can take to actually get started in this industry obviously if there's any questions that come up while you're watching the video if you're curious about something or you have a question about something just pop them in the comments and we'll respond as soon as we possibly can so let's dive into the very first step in getting started in UX design the first thing that I would say I would recommend to everybody is to first do your research so this means actually taking a scan looking around at the people who are really vocal and loud about UX design online I mean that's the easiest place to do it so I'm gonna give you a few accounts on YouTube that you can check out just to get a sort of a vibe of general vibe of the industry what people are talking about what people are working on that kind of thing the first one that we would definitely recommend following is the future so the future is a really really great channel on YouTube they just hit 500,000 subscribers half a million is much easier to say they're so fantastic because they have I mean first of all they put out tons and tons and tons of videos but also they're talking about like the business behind design and they're talking about design on a more kind of like broad spectrum which is super nice when you're first getting into it because it's nice to kind of learn where where you can go with it and what you can actually do in design so it's great Chris dough is fantastic they talked about you know there's great videos pricing design work my first design portfolio there's basically everything on there from beginner level to more advanced so super great channel to follow the next one we would recommend is high resolution I don't know this one is really good talking mostly to industry experts all the videos are really kind of doing in-depth interviews on kind of more like intricate parts of the industry and what's going on in the design world so you have things like that this is we have air beam these director of experience we have I do Tom Kelly's on there talking about design thinking obviously there's ubermann so you have all of these people in very very high positions and I think in the research phase a really great tactic is to look at these people what they're doing and what they're talking about and to kind of decide whether or not you find that interesting and exciting so I think that that is oh Spotify the VP of design for this is a quite the list the next one that I would check out is called awards actually its Awards because it's the W's there's three w's but what's cool this is a conference actually that goes on all of around the world Amsterdam San Francisco Los Angeles London Paris you know all these conferences but you're gonna get a little bit more of those kind of like inspirational talks which i think is really really exciting especially when you're new to an industry to just sort of see the general feel of what people are talking about and how they're talking about it you're also gonna hear from industry experts oh Pablo's on here Pablo Stanley he's great we've got Netflix we've got Adobe so there's gear to hear from basically the biggest people in the industry so I would check out I mean there's so many different YouTube channels really really good ones but these are kind of like nice big ones that have a lot of information a lot of you can like sit back grab a bowl of popcorn with butter and salt on it it's really important in Germany they eat sweet popcorn like always sweet it's so strange anyway so always have salty popcorn and you can just watch a bunch of videos and just figure out whether or not you know you're interested in the topics so that's step one just check out online what people are talking about and figure out if it's actually exciting to you now step two is to learn the theory behind design so here's the thing a lot of people are interested in design because like the way things look they like to you know make things look nice whatever that feeling is that kind of initially triggered you into thinking like maybe I want to get into design but the thing is you really need to actually know what goes behind why you like the way or why someone else likes the way something looks or feels so you need to know the real basics of design before you can kind of actually start doing it you need to know the fundamentals so I'm gonna show you a couple of courses online that might be interesting for you to check out so the first one is UX beginner comm this is a really great page there's tons of resources some are paid some are free but he actually has this really cool QA that I think is really really helpful especially if you're transitioning into UX and get you know just getting started he kind of has that kind of all down so he has this whole FAQ here what is user experience is it the right career for me what types of jobs how do I get started what are the best resources and then also I love this to transitioning into a UX career he has all these questions do I need a degree do I need to learn how to code to be a UX designer so all of these questions that are things you know that probably you're asking yourself right now and they're all found on this site really really great one to check out he also has some job hunting tactics as well which is also also helpful a little bit further down the line the next one that I'm gonna recommend is a career foundry course it's called UX design for beginners and it is super simple it is free and it's a really nice kind of tutorial it has six videos that you go through and at the end you even have a nice little test that you can take so all of these are really easy access right you can go in you can get the information you can learn a little bit and just get a little bit more behind the actual theory of what actually design is then the last one is actually really cool it's on udemy it's a UX design and user experience course about Theory only so this one is actually really really great if you want to kind of really get the basics down so what you'll learn you'll learn what relevant tools are for UX designers how to research a UX project that's super super important you'll learn what responsibilities of a US designer actually our this is great how to run competitor research all these kind of things like all the things that you really need at the beginning of your career okay so that's the second step basically you want to start learning so you've kind of done the research you figure it out you've gotten excited and inspired and you're a bit motivated then you move into actually learning the fundamental basics and you can start really small there so step three is to learn some of the tools now we're talking about kind of the more technical tools like the prototyping of design tools these are the ones that you're going to be able to actually build sort of like prototypes with you're gonna be able to build some screens put some things together which is gonna be really important when you start with doing some client work now I know that it can be very overwhelming especially when you kind of dive deep into the design tools range online it can get it like the whole goes really deep I know that it could be a bit overwhelming because there are so many tools out there but it's good to know that you should basically take a few of the most popular ones and just dabble in them learn a little bit about them get your feet wet make sure that you're able to do kind of very simple tasks on them let's pop into YouTube let's say sketch is something that we want to learn how to do if you want to do visual design sketch is a really good one sketch tutorial for beginners perfect let's see what comes up here great so Jessie Showalter comes up here this is a really popular video 173 thousand views so that's obviously probably gonna be a nice one and he takes you through that there's also another one here roof design a simple landing page on sketch cool so this is a really nice tutorial where you're actually walked through how to design something in sketch so I think that like just going on YouTube picking a few tools and then kind of do deep diving a few tutorials on them actually most of the tools are free at first as well so that's good to know you can sign up for them you get a free trial and you can basically learn all of the kind of fundamentals on those tools how to do kind of the basics and it's really good to have that down before you move on so that's basically step three is just to learn some of the industry standard tools step four is to join in the UX design community this is a super important one maybe I would argue the most important one if you want to really get involved in the UX community that's how you're going to learn the fastest that's how you're gonna meet people who are working in design you can learn from them you can ask them questions I think that one of the best platforms to do this is on Instagram we happen to be on Instagram if you'd like to follow us and ask us questions we're happy to answer all right but there are some other people you should also follow so on Instagram it's what's really nice is there is that kind of community feel so you can actually follow people you can DM them you can comment on their work you can ask questions about it and people are super open to having conversations and the more conversations that you're having the faster you're going to learn so so one of the accounts that you should definitely follow is called more janda I think this is Michael janda and he is a designer speaker and author of burn your portfolio which of course we're big fans of because we don't like portfolios either so what's really cool though is he has super tangible advice he's talking to people in the industry there's a lot a lot of videos on his Instagram and he's basically talking all about kind of the business behind design and the kind of the strategy business strategy design strategy all those things which are super super important and he's very very friendly as well and open for a chat so I would definitely follow him if I were you also UX goodies is a great one this is it's like really good to learn on as well and this is I hope I said that right but she has such a good account she's basically always walking you through super nice tangible tips on UX design it's a great place to learn she's super open for a chat you can go into her DMS and she's really really great there she is she's very friendly so yeah and I just love her Instagram I think it's really really helpful and just really great there's also and FISA and her hers is and feast sine emphasize and facin get it like an FISA and design put together and pretty sure word Leavenworth pad South honest but her accounts really great as well she lives in Prague she's doing talks all the time this is her doing a talk recently and she's talking about giving presentations she does a lot of book designed thinking a lot of UX design and she just gives a lot of really really tangible advice to designers it's it's really great and she kind of just documents her journey as well her stories are always really good so definitely someone to check out then the next one I mean there's so many accounts so I know like this is just for that we're following but there's many many more out there is called UX bites this guy's really great his name's Gabriel and he has actually he's just a friggin powerhouse this guy he's posting constantly like I think he's posting six times a week and his stuff is super super in-depth and usable which is really great so he also just is he's just the the followers are just pouring in for Gabriel so we're super happy for him and he's going through basically super it let's let's take a look at one of his posts here we go this is really cool so for steps for good UX writing so this is like super helpful right like especially when you're first getting started so it's like to find the message make it friendly shorten it very important and then make it useful any kind of walks to you through how to do that so definitely want to follow as well all these links of course will be in the description you can find them all there so that is step four I would really really highly recommend getting involved in the community there's also tons and tons of meetups you can go on meetup calm and you can actually attend in person and meetups which is kind of nice it's nice to do things where you're actually seeing people you know face-to-face it doesn't always have to be online but what I would really recommend is getting involved in the conversation asking lots of questions meeting as many people as you can and and just being really open that you're new and excited to learn because people really love that people love to share at what they know so that would be my four simple steps if you really at the beginning of your UX journey to get into this industry thank you so much for watching this video I hope you found it helpful if you liked it just give it a like down below if this is a first video that you are watching on our channel welcome and also it would be so cool if you subscribed we have videos coming out very regularly every week you're gonna have new videos and they're all about UX design innovation they're all about design sprints the business behind design running an agency the list goes on if you need more from us and this wasn't quite enough you can also find us on 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just doesn't you're like I think we're not gonna do that Calum decides plays god [Music]