 Hey everybody, in this video today I'm going to take you through our three favorite tools that we like to use at different stages of the UX design process. I am Brittany and in this video I'm going to give you a nice overview of some of the really key tools that you're going to want to learn if you're getting into UX design. There are many different parts of UX design that you're going to want to consider and there's so many tools out there. So we're going to focus on three key areas within UX design and we're going to tell you what the tool is that here at AJ & Smart we prefer to use and how we like to use it. So if you have any questions anything comes up at all that you're wondering you can definitely pop everything down below in the comments and we will answer you as soon as possible. So now let's get straight into it we're going to start with prototyping. Obviously this is a very key part of UX design and our prototyping tool of choice is Figma. Now Figma is really great we use it on a weekly basis you can build really high fidelity prototypes with it. Basically what's great about it is you can use it for collaborative projects so you can actually have your whole team working remotely and everyone can work on the same file at the same time. This is really really essential for us so it's super intuitive it's very easy to use. What's really cool is you can actually have team libraries which is super super helpful when you actually want to build prototypes on a regular basis you can have sort of a dummy format that you can always start with. So Figma is definitely a really really great tool to learn how to use. Now one thing that's really great as well is you can send clients a link to the Figma file and they can actually view it without downloading the actual tool. So this is super helpful it's browser-based super intuitive easy to use. The only thing about Figma is it can be a little bit limited when it comes to animations. So we actually really like to use Marvel with Figma that gives us a little bit more variety and we're actually able to do a little bit more if you really want to jazz up your prototype. So that would be our pro tip is Figma as a prototyping tool and if you want to get fancy you can use Marvel with it. Another key area of UX design is of course communication. Communication with your team communication with the client there's always a lot going on and a lot of things to organize so having a good communication tool is really important. The one that we use internally is Slack. So Slack is a really great communication tool. It helps you keep your conversations organized so we love it. We keep everything kind of organized here. We have different kind of we have one channel that's called Lightning Demos. This is where we share kind of like cool products and services that are popping up that we think would actually make really great examples when we're doing design sprints. We have interesting links this is kind of similar but it's more like product industry news that kind of stuff is going on in here. We have like a really nice company moments area where we actually post photos and just like it's a bit more goofy but you also have like our sprint delivery. We have like basically every team has their own sort of channel where they're actually sharing news. So it's a really great tool to use if you want to keep up to date with what's going on in your team and across your company. Obviously Slack can get a little bit busy. It's definitely one where people you know argue a lot that things get kind of lost in Slack. But what is really cool is you can actually add hashtags to your posts so you can always keep searching for things. You can always find things really easily based on just a really simple hashtag search. So definitely we would recommend Slack for any kind of like mid-sized even a large organization if you want to keep in contact with each other and just keep emails to an absolute minimum. Nobody likes emails. This effect, right? So the third and final area that I want to talk about is project management. So obviously for UX designers project management is very very important. Usually if you're in UX design you'll be working with a client. You might be working on several different projects with several different clients and keeping everything organized can get a little bit daunting. Now this tool is a new one that we've just started using at AJ and Smart and we thought we would share with you. It is called Notion. So you may have heard of it before. It's an excellent excellent tool to organize your entire actually it's it's a tool where you can take almost everything from all your sort of organizational scheduling note taking any kind of tools like that. You can kind of bring everything into one place and that's why I love it so much. It can do a lot so it can be overwhelming at first to sort of set yourself up correctly and so I would really recommend actually taking the time to do that before you sort of give up on it because I know a lot of people have you know the kind of talk around notion is that actually it's a little bit too complicated or too robust and so they get a little bit bogged down by all the sort of possibilities. So set yourself up and then you'll be totally fine and you'll be able to keep organized and on top of everything. So I would actually really recommend looking at this article by Mario. He actually goes through how he uses notion as a repository for the UX process and he goes into into really really a lot of detail about how he organizes his whole notion board. You can see how he's doing it. He has his can band board in here. He has literally personas. He has the whole UX process all in notion and he's come up with a really great way to organize it and I would argue it might be better than the way that we're organizing it right now. So I would definitely check out this article. He also has some really nice videos that take you through how he's actually done it so you can even start here and then kind of optimize it and change it for how it would work best for you. But I would really recommend giving notion a try. It's so it's so flexible that you're really able to do everything in it. Right now I have my calendar in it. I have my to-dos. I have my planning. I have my meeting notes. I have absolutely everything I need in this one tool and it's just such a relief. So I would really recommend giving it a shot. So I hope that that gave you a nice overview of three key areas within UX design and the tools that will help you really excel in those areas. These are our three favorite tools right now. They're changing all the time but we definitely want to hear what your favorite tools are. So what is your favorite prototyping tool? What is your favorite project management tool and what are you using to communicate with your teams? We'd love to know so please let us know in the comments. Also if you liked this video, if you found it helpful or interesting please like the video. We'd really appreciate that and just if you have no questions but you're just like hey that was good. You can also just say that in the comments. We love to read those too. Thank you so much for watching. If you'd like to catch us on other channels we have many of them. One thing you should definitely do is follow us on Instagram. We're giving you daily behind the scenes of our agency here in Berlin. As well you can obviously listen to our podcast. Our podcast is called Product Breakfast Club. It comes out every Monday and it's giving you all kinds of industry news. It's super fun. It's hosted by Jake Knapp and Jonathan Courtney. Also another thing you can do is it too many. Three is a lot but either way you can also sign up for our newsletter. Our newsletter is coming out every two weeks. It is not spammy at all. It gives you lots of good information, lots of knowledge. Basically we're taking all the cool stuff that's going on in tech and product and we're putting it down into a nice little concise package just for you. So definitely sign up for that down below as well. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time. Well don't touch my hair. Whatever you do, don't touch my hair. Is that a song? It is not. I'm Brittany and in this video I'm going to take you through some of the... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, good. Our pro tip for a prototyping tool is definitely... So what else should I say? Is that okay?