 In this video, I'm going to take you through five simple steps that are going to help you get started in product design. I wouldn't want it any other way. If we could also put that in the video. My name is Brittany and I am reporting to you from AJ & Smart. We are a small digital product design studio based in Berlin. We're working with some of the biggest companies in the world. Companies like Google, Adidas, with Tanza, and we're actually just helping them build better products. Okay, before I jump into step number one, I want to quickly preface what I'm talking about when I say product design. So when I say product design, it encompasses UI design, UX design. I'm talking about even like product management. I'm talking about sort of the whole industry of product design. Now, if you want to learn more about what exactly product design is, this video that we just released a few days ago. We'll just like kind of pop it up here so you can take a look at that. That's a really in-depth video. It's about what exactly product design is and how to define it and what kinds of roles that you will be sort of applying for if you decide to get into the industry. So step one is get educated. I'm not actually going to recommend design university. I'm not saying that you should do it or shouldn't do it. I just think that there are a lot of really great ways to learn about the industry that don't involve spending a bunch of money and a bunch of time. And the cool thing actually is that here at AJ & Smart, we're a company of about 20 people and there are very few of us who are actually like trained in design. Our most recent hire is actually, he became an intern and then we just recently hired him on and he completely taught himself product design. So it's definitely possible and you can really have an excellent career without having to do all that kind of upfront investment. The first thing, the first tool I would use is definitely YouTube. We follow some really great product design people on this lovely platform we call YouTube that really just teach step by step what it means to be a product designer. They teach you the tools, all those kinds of things. A few of the YouTube channels that I would recommend would be The Future. They're a really great channel. They have all kinds of videos from the business of product design to the nitty gritty stuff. So definitely give them a follow. Flux is really great. He does daily vlogs about his life as a product designer and he was doing a lot of freelance for a while and now he's kind of playing with the idea of actually starting his own agency. So that's a really cool kind of story to follow as well. We'll list a bunch in the description so you can actually go and follow all the people that we're following and that'll help you a lot. So there are also online courses. Some online courses actually cost money but you can get a lot of the resources from them for free before you actually have to sign up for the course. Udacity is a great, great tool. They have tons of courses all surrounding product design, UX, UI. I think they even have product manager courses so you can look into that as well. We'll have a link in the description to their course list. The other thing that I'm going to recommend that is going to seem obvious but it's so important are books. There are so many books out there that will help you understand and learn product design very quickly. There's a lot of books about the theory of product design which is basically what you would get from university. Sometimes I look at this camera just for fun, you know, because it feels bad that I don't look into that. I feel sorry about that. So books on product design. This is great. There's so many out there. Like I mentioned, I'm going to pop up a video that I made a little while ago but I still feel it's quite relevant about some books that I would recommend if you're new to product design. So we'll pop that up there for you. We're going to also suggest some in the description for you so you'll have a nice little head start. The second step is going to learn some product design tools. Now you've kind of got a nice basis if you've done step one which was to get educated. You have a nice basis. You have a nice theory of what product design is, how it works and now you really need to kind of get your hands dirty and start learning some of the common tools that are used in product design. Now there are so many tools out there. I know it can be very overwhelming. Some of kind of the standard tools that a lot of companies are using right now for screen design would be Sketch and Figma. Those two basically can be used to design almost anything and are just really easy to use, very intuitive tools. And if you're doing prototyping, like interactive prototyping, you can use Marvel and InVision. So learning those four tools are really going to kind of set you up. You'll be in a good place to kind of get your first job or actually start doing some work. So again, hop on YouTube, look up some really great tutorials on these tools and that'll help you get going. Someone like Jesse Schowalter. I'm sorry Jesse, I really am. But he has these really great videos about all the tools that he's using right now and one video I'll link in the description. It kind of takes you through what he's using and why he's using it and that's a really great place to start. So thank you Jesse for that video, very good. Okay, step three, get some experience. Now that you know what product design is, you know how to use some of the tools, the next step is to get a little bit of experience. Now ideally of course this would come in the form of an internship but that doesn't always have to be your first step. I would really highly recommend looking into some websites like meetup.com. They have tons of meetups and groups for product designers and UX designers and startups and you can start going to these events where you're going to meet people, actually learn more like kind of intricate details about the industry and what's going on right now in the industry. Super, super valuable. There's also like hackathons that go on all over the world. There's one called Global Service Jam. It's run actually purely by volunteers. One of the volunteers is actually working at AJ & Smart, Dee Scorano. You might recognize her from some of the videos as well. So she runs these Global Service Jams where it's like tons of product designers all coming together of varying experience levels and they're designing stuff together and it's a really great experience especially for someone who's more of a student level. So definitely there's tons of stuff happening like that where you can really get out and get some experience without having to actually get a job. So definitely check those two things out. We'll have, of course, links in the description. Okay, moving on to step number four. This one is actually kind of key almost for any career but I think it's really great in the field of product design. It's really important or helpful to find somebody in this industry that you think has a really great job or even a really great career path. And kind of use them as your sort of guiding light. I don't know. Basically you want to have someone that you can look up to and say, you know what, if at some point in my career I got their job, I'd be super happy. And what's helpful with that is once you have sort of that person in mind, you can so easily backtrack and see how their career evolved and what they actually did to get there. It's so super helpful for yourself to set some goals to make sure that you're kind of always moving forward. So some product designers that we really look up to and are kind of following their careers here at AJ & Smart are Topias Van Schneider. He is from Spotify. Very cool. We'll have all of his info below as well. There's Ryan Singer from Basecamp. I mean Basecamp is one of our like favorite tools to use. It's cool to know who's kind of behind those tools and who's making those things work. And that's a really great way to find someone if you're curious on how that could all play out. Okay, step number five is do some work. Any work at all, honestly. Anything will do. You can do work for free, for almost nothing. You can invent some problem that you need to solve. But it's so important to have something that's yours that you actually created and worked on to be able to show people your skills and what you're able to do. And it's also just really, really great practice. Now I know that a lot of people say, don't do free work. There's a lot of kind of rhetoric around that about how everyone should get paid for working and all this kind of stuff. The thing is, I personally believe, and a lot of people at AJ & Smart, we kind of go on the basis of when you're low on the totem pole, unfortunately you will often have to do a little bit more work than what you're actually getting paid for. So that's just like, hopefully you have that fire, you have that excitement that that won't be a really upsetting factor for you that you might not be getting paid much of anything at the very start of your career. But we definitely recommend just getting some kind of work on your belt. A couple things to slap in a portfolio will help a lot. So that was five steps. I know, but I have one more for you. Which is just a bonus step. I just didn't want it to be one of the key steps because I think, you know, it's kind of an obvious one. What you're going to do to get started in product design is to find a job. Now, this is, of course, easier said than done. I totally realize that. But hopefully, having completed all of those kind of five steps before, you'll be in a really good scenario. You'll probably have a really nice network. You might have some work under your belt. Is that what they say? Under your belt? Yeah, I don't know. You'll have some work to show people. And you'll have a nice direction on where you want your career to go. That's a really great place for you to kind of start feeling out the job market. That's not an easy thing to do. We recommend using the canvas strategy. If you don't know what that is, I'll have a link in the description to talk all about that. But we also have a really great video on how to get a job in product design that was recorded, you know, a while ago. It might have been like almost a year ago, but it's still super relevant. So you can check that one out here. I think I'll have it up here on the screen for you. That was it. A nice quick video to just help you kind of get started in this industry, to get going, feel a little bit inspired. And hopefully these steps were kind of tangible enough that you can feel like tomorrow you can just jump right in. I'm Brittany from Aegean Smart. If you really liked this video, I hope that you would give it just a nice like and maybe subscribe to our channel if you're not already subscribed. The other thing is I would love to know you guys out there in YouTube Land what is your dream product design job? What company would you love to work at? It doesn't have to be Aegean Smart, but you know, if that comes up... No, I'm just kidding. Don't say Aegean Smart. It's more exciting if you say somewhere else. All the things I talked about, all the links I talked about are going to be in the description so you can find them all below. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you, Callum. This was really great. It was excellent. Thank you, Laptop, for keeping all my notes aligned. Thank you, Michael, for walking in a couple of times because it keeps you on your toes and that's what you need when you're doing these videos. Wonderful. Have a great day. See you later.