 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. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. 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 going to 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 going to give you a few accounts on YouTube that you can check out just to get a sort of a vibe and 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. 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 you can go with it and what you can actually do in design. So it's great. Chris Doe is fantastic. They talk 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 why it's not loading. It's super weird. 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 this is we have Airbnb's director of experience. We have IDEO Tom Kelly's on there talking about design thinking, obviously. There's Uber's director of design. 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's VP of design. This is quite the list. The next one that I would check out is called Awards. Actually, it's 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 around the world. Amsterdam, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Paris, all these conferences. But you're going to 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 going to hear from industry experts. Oh, Pablo's on here, Pablo Stanley. He's great. We've got Netflix. We've got Adobe. So you're going 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 they 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 going to show you a couple of courses online that might be interesting for you to check out. So the first one is UXBeginner.com. This is a really great page. There's tons of resources. Some are paid, some are free, but he actually has this really cool Q&A that I think is really, really helpful, especially if you're transitioning into UX and, 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 too. 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 helpful a little bit further down the line. The next one that I'm going to 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 design, how to research a UX project. That's super, super important. You'll learn what responsibilities of a UX designer actually are. 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've figured out, you've gotten excited and inspired and you're 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 and design tools. These are the ones that you're going to be able to actually build sort of like prototypes with. You're going to be able to build some screens, put some things together, which is going to be really important when you start 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 like the whole goes really deep. I know that it can 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 Jesse Showalter comes up here. This is a really popular video, this is 73,000 views. So that's obviously probably going to be a nice one. And he takes you through that. There's also another one here. Oh, 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 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 got 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 is 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 going to 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 one of the accounts that you should definitely follow is called Morjanda, 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. 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 Anfisa. And hers is Anfisa and design. Get it, like Anfisa and design put together. I'm pretty sure we're at that's what that is. But her accounts are 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 design thinking, a lot of UX design. And she just gives a lot of really, really tangible advice to designers. 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. The next one, I mean, there's so many accounts. So I know like this is just four that we're following, but there's many, many more out there. It's 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 followers are just pouring in for Gabriel. So we're super happy for him. And he's going through basically super, let's take a look at one of his posts. Here we go. This is really cool. So four 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. And he kind of walks 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.com and you can actually attend in-person 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 just being really open that you're new and excited to learn. Because people really love that. People love to share what they know. So that would be my four simple steps if you're 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. 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