if you want to transfer your career into the ux design industry or if you just find your first
ux design role then this video is made for you hey everyone i'm aliena and in today's
video i will talk about things that you can do to rock at your ux work during your first month
there are only three categories of things that we need to do and that is understanding the product
the process and people let's start from the product of course when you understand what is
this product about what i'm going to design and besides just trying to use the product
understanding the product also means understanding the user of the product
how they are using the product and what are the acronyms of the things within the product
how do you call this how do you call that so let me give you a full list of my tips
my first tip for you to understand your product better is to watch youtube videos about your
product because by watching youtube videos you not only can see how the product looks but you can
also see how different users are interacting with your product so pretty much just by watching a few
videos you'll find out what needs to be improved and my next tip is for you to try out the product
but remember it's not always the case that you can try out the product for example i'm working
at ebay and for me to try out the product that i'm working on i need to become an ebay seller
and then i need to have a lot of inventories but in the first month we probably don't have time
to do all those so my tip for you is to ask the engineers for a qa website or qa demo qa might
stand for quality assurance i'm not exactly sure but usually there's like a demo website
where your engineer provides you a demo account and a demo password so that you can directly
interact with your product without going through all the other process my next tip for you is to
have a document or a spreadsheet and note down every single name that's related to your product
when i say name i especially mean accord name for each page and then the element name for each
element your company might call certain things this page is a landing page this page is a forking
page this element we shell it a shell different companies call different elements by different
names so note down those names are very important and also if your company has multiple versions of
the design system you also need to know that what are the names of those design systems
for example your newest design system that haven't even been implemented might call diamond the
previous one might called gold and you understand what is what my next tip is to get the figma file
and make a copy of that figma file so that you can interact with the figma file play around with it
now i've never seen a figma file that's just perfectly designed because it's likely that if
your company hires you you're being hired to solve some design problems you might be taking over
somebody else designs files that are halfway done and then see something that's just very chaotic
so once you see different components right click on it and then select go to main component to see
where are the main components where are the sub components it's not easy to see just by looking
at it and if there's documentation in different pages then great read through those documentations
and if not then that leads to my next tip that is asking your manager or relative stakeholders
to understand the history of the project that you will be working on when i say history i mean
asking them how long have you been working on this project what leads to the starting of this project
and why is it taking so long and what have you guys tried what have failed and why are they
failed what are certain constraints especially legal constraints engineering constraints that
i need to work within because everyone who's new to our job is usually more exciting than all the
other people we might be coming to this work and then be like okay i can make this better
without understanding the full history then it's likely for newcomers to make the exact same design
mistakes that the old designer has already made so please understand the history before going into
the design the next category of things is process process on a higher level just means how to start
a project how to carry on a project and how to end a project believe me it's so important to
understand the right way and the wrong way of starting a project because many designers are
chased by pms and are thrown with thousands things that we need to do and that is not a good process
let's go back a little bit and start with the easy ones my first tip is to understand what
is going on with each meeting so look into your calendar and you'll see some repeating meetings
just look into the description of the meeting and that will tell you a lot and of course participate
in the meeting and see what are people actually doing in this meeting because those descriptions
might be outdated for two years you don't know and my second tip is to get access to the tools that
you'll be using design tool communication tool and management tool understand whether there's
any template whether there's any pattern when to use what tool and how are people using these tools
for example for figma your team might have already created a template for you to use that includes a
thumbnail template some documentation template and other templates i don't know oh also if you want
to see how to organize a figma file and well document in a figma file check out this video
and for management tool your team might be using monday.com or asana to document your work
understand how to well document your work so that different stakeholders can clearly see why you are
making certain design iterations and so that leadership can see your work then ask your pms
and managers about what is this process about how to start a project what has happened to you before
how to collaborate what is the best way to collaborate and how to work with engineers
and also ask the engineers how to work with the engineers and this will lead to the people part
because this part of the process we really need to understand it by experiencing it and i'm aware
that i have a diverse group of audience so please think about the culture that you are working in
before taking all my advice and for me i think the most important thing when it comes to people
is to understand them genuinely as a person and that includes understanding their context
their strengths and weaknesses because once you understand their context strengths and
weaknesses you can pair your strengths with their weaknesses peer their strengths with
your weaknesses and then make a great combo so some specific tips for you to do is in the first
month set up one-on-one meetings with people you'll be collaborating with don't wait for
them to set up meeting with you i think it's better to set up meetings as early as possible
especially for the ones you will be collaborating closely with you don't want to be going to the
same meeting with one person for 10 times but still don't understand anything about them
and for me i also think it's better to be genuine and humble than to be you know lying
so if you don't have a lot of years of experience in ux design there's no need to lie and say that
i have many years of experience just say your background is in blah blah blah i'm
looking forward to learn more from you and when it comes to people another thing to look out for
is to understand this person's pace for example for designers there will be a
group of designers that has faster pace but don't really think it through before making any action
just like me and there can be other designers that have slower pace but really think it through
it and think through the long term strategy before making any changes on the figma file
so understand what you are and pair yourself with the right person that can cover your
weaknesses and benefit from your strength so please just take your time and as a summary 99
of thing that you need to understand in the first month belongs to three categories product process
and people you can start from the one that you are good at and branch that knowledge to the other two
in most cases your company is not expecting you to do any great work or productive work in
the first month other than just understanding the culture the people and try to sit through
meetings and listen the best thing you can do is to learn take good notes are always helpful and
creating genuine relationship and understanding of people are always helpful and think from your
user's perspective and helping your user are always helpful i hope you learned something
from today's video if you find this video helpful and want to see the part too as always comment the
victory sign emoji in the comment section below or simply comment what you want to see from my next
video in the comment section below i would love to hear your feedback my new instagram account
is at @thealienacai please follow me there as well thank you so much and see you next time