 If you want to be a junior UX designer or mid-level and you want to stay there forever, then maybe you don't need to be obsessed with things like this. If you want to get to the senior level or the high salary brackets or work at some of these Silicon Valley companies, then it does need to become an obsession. There are two questions that every UX designer needs to be able to answer well if they want to get a job somewhere. Now, you might not be asked the questions exactly like I'm going to say them, but you really need to be able to answer these two questions if you want to get a job. These two questions also really tell me if someone is really passionate about UX or if they're just looking to make some money. So rather than this being one of those YouTube videos where you have to wait till the end to get those questions, I'm going to tell you right up front. The two questions are, what's your favorite product right now? Number two, how would you make it better? Those are the two simple questions you need to be able to answer. I'm going to tell you why and why it's so important that you have an answer for these questions. And also, if you don't have an answer to these questions right now, what it sort of says about you as UX designer. And it's totally okay if you don't have an answer on the top of your head, but let me know down below in the comments, what's your favorite product right now? I don't care if it's a physical, digital, whatever product. And number two, what would you do to make it better? Maybe pause this video and think about that. Now, these two questions are what I start every UX job interview off with. The reason is these questions can bring me down a rabbit hole into how you think about products. A really common answer from someone who really doesn't care that much about the product world is, you know, I don't really know and they take out their phone and they start looking around and they're like, Instagram, Instagram is my favorite product right now. And I'm like, okay, why? So I ask why, why is that your favorite product right now? You know, I like the way you can swipe from left to right here and blah, blah, blah. This kind of starts to help me build a picture about the way that this person thinks and also their passion, right? If they're passionate about products, then they wouldn't have much trouble talking about what they enjoy about something, right? What they love about a product, what they don't like about a product. And I think that's one of the very common things, one of the very common issues that I see, especially with mid-level and senior designers, when they come looking for a job here or when they come looking for a job at my clients' companies, they are expected to have some passion around product. And now because it's so easy to become a UX designer, now because everyone can take some f***ing UX course on some website, now everyone calls themselves a UX designer, but the best ones are the ones who are actually kind of obsessed with products and think about it a lot and read about it a lot. And it's their hobby. For me, it's an absolute hobby to be obsessed with products and to be obsessed with the tiny details of products. I wanna nerd out on the small details of the new iPhone. I wanna nerd out on, okay, what are the tiny little new animations? Like if I was talking about my favorite product right now, I would probably say the iPad and the Magic Keyboard combined with the UI that they created for the cursor. This is like my favorite product combination. And this is something that I would be able to talk about with someone for 30 minutes straight about how obsessed I am about it. And that's because I'm someone who's obsessed with products. That's because I'm someone who naturally loves products and obsesses about them every day, all day. And that's my thing. That's my passion. That's why I was able to very quickly go from junior UX designer to mid-level to senior to design manager to then running my own company and then being the person who's hiring other people. This has a lot to do with the passion for products. And the best people who work at my company and over the last 10 years have always been the ones who are super nerdy and interested in products. And I'm not just talking about iPhones or whatever. I'm talking about different digital products. I'm talking even about, for example, this is a notebook that I really, really love and I'm obsessed with different types of notebooks and different types of stationery. This is a pen I really, really love. I even love this water bottle. It's a really great water bottle. And I kind of nerd out about the tiny details about these things. This is something that's just deeply part of my life. If you wanna be a junior UX designer or mid-level and you wanna stay there forever, then maybe you don't need to be obsessed with things like this. If you want to get to the senior level or even manager level or the high salary brackets or work at some of these Silicon Valley companies, then it does need to become an obsession. The attention to detail needs to become an obsession. Real quick, if you're enjoying this video so far, make sure you get on our newsletter every single week. We've got a ton of free UX tips. It's really not spammy. It's just once per week. Down in the description somewhere here, you can check it out. Join like 35,000 other people getting this newsletter. And the cool thing is you're getting real tips like this rather than just the basic UX stuff you see everywhere else. One way to cultivate this, one way to cultivate this obsession is to really not just accept that the things you're using are just, okay, I'm using Google Docs, whatever, I'm just using Google Docs. Look at the interface. Think about the interactions. Look at YouTube. You're watching this video on YouTube. Everything around you, what you see on this page, people have thought about it. People have obsessed about it. Think about the products you're using day to day and make sure that you can always answer the question, hey, what's your favorite product right now? Or what are your favorite products right now? Why are those your favorite products? And what would you do to improve these things? What sort of things would you do to improve these products? These questions trip up 80% of the people who come here for interviews. And you can tell they don't really care that much about products. And a final thing, this question I then turn back to them about our own product. So towards the end of the interview, I'll say, okay, so look at AJ and Smart's products. Like look at even something as basic as our website or some of our funnels or our YouTube channel. What do you notice about it? And how would you make that better? It's always good to be on top of these things. It's always good to look at everything as if it's a product. Don't just be blind to the things around you. Everything is a product. Everything has been thought about. Everything can be improved. And you really need to have this mindset. You need to have the mindset that's always ready to answer those two questions. Now, obviously there are more questions in interviews about UX design, but these two are kind of, they bring you down a rabbit hole of other types of questions. If you can answer those two, then you're gonna be much better at answering all the other types of questions that come up. I promise you, because I interviewed so many different UX designers for this company and I help our clients also hire UX designers, I promise you that 80% of UX designers, basically people who don't watch this channel, they do not know how to answer that question. They've never thought about it and they don't care about products. And that's one of the biggest reasons that they don't get hired. And it might be one of the reasons you're not getting hired if you've been trying. Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you hit the like button. You know, if you're not subscribed, a lot of people are not subscribed but watch these videos. Make sure you hit the subscribe and also do join the newsletter if you wanna get more from me. I send one email every week with just the most interesting product and UX links. And that's just a great way to keep on top of things and not have to like look around the internet every single day for the different interesting product-y things. Thanks so much for watching. Bye-bye.