hey everyone i'm aliana i'm a
self-taught ui ux designer and welcome
back to my channel today i want to share
some tools that i've been using as a ui
ux designer these tools have helped me a
lot when it comes to realizing my ideas
communicating with pms engineers and
other stakeholders managing my time
documenting my process and also just
declutter my brain
and let's get started with the first
major design tool that i use is figma i
think most companies these days are
either using figma or trying to transfer
from another app to figma figma is great
for design work communication
collaboration
prototyping and it also has a huge
community page where you can pretty much
just store other templates
for example this trip my file is
something i downloaded from the figma
community page and based on my
understanding this is a website that
helps you to book a plane ticket usually
if you are working with a company that
has existing product you'll be working
with an existing design system and in
this case it's located here at the
components page usually it's not like
this usually it's in another different
figma file which just says
design system for this company and you
can just pretty much copy whatever
components are available in there and
paste it in the new design that you want
to create
and one thing i use a lot in a figma
file is this chat function
for example if i need some help with
like the content design work which is
the text you can either just
click a place
or
you can create a box of the place where
you want to comment on a design
help me
with this design
something like this
so usually the content designer will
also be using the chat function a lot
telling me what tags to put in into
different places
i think if you are new to this field
figma is definitely the go-to design
software you shall start learning and
start playing around with and whenever
you feel lost you can always go to the
figma community page and check out other
people's design check out some plugins
and some wedges that can be very fun to
play with
something that i've been struggling with
when i was first entering the field of
ui ux design is that i don't know how to
organize my design file so that it looks
organized so if you've encountered a
similar problem and you want to learn
more about how i organize my design file
please comment banana in the comment
section below and i will make a video on
that and let's also confuse the people
who haven't watched it this far
the next two that i want to introduce is
very helpful for documentation
and task management
and that is koda
koda is a new type of all you one
interactive dog and it also blends the
best of dogs spreadsheets presentations
and applications into one surface
coda is also the sponsor of this video
so thank you very much
usually when it comes to designers we
have weekly stand-up meeting or
bi-weekly stand-up meeting and by the
way if you have daily stand-up meetings
i am so sorry for you
so what happens in the standard meetings
that designers will share what we'll be
doing for this week
is there any new project do you need
help from other people when it comes to
the project and in coda it looks
something like a project tracker and you
can always create a new project tracker
when you first come to coda by clicking
starter templates
and project tracker
just imagine that the project name will
be the project name of everybody's
project and for assignee it will be one
two three designers or other pos that's
responsible for the project and for the
status it can be pending in progress
completed backlogged usually i'm not the
person who needs to change any of the
tags or status i would just be saying it
out and someone in the meeting will help
me to change the status if necessary but
something good about this is that we can
always provide some quick documentation
when it comes to progress by expanding
a row and adding a comment and that has
been something that's really helpful for
me
and another great thing about coda is
that it works well with other tools like
figma so if you're at coda's website you
can go to my workspace and then click
template see more and search for design
this design to-do list is a perfect
demonstration how it works with stigma
so click create
and you can link the document with your
figma account
and here it gives a little bit of
demonstration how it might look once you
link it with your file it will show the
name of the screen and also the image of
the screen of how it looks like and this
is a page that's really helpful when it
comes to communicating with my design
manager and also the product owner of
the project
now another thing i like to do with coda
is basically just documenting whatever
meetings i have whatever's on my mind
anything that's related to my work and
recently i've been obsessed with this
new thing so go to my workspace go to
template again and see more
there's this 30-day decluttering
challenge which i
really think i need to do
so i'm just clicking create for now
it's like a calendar for a 30 days
challenge for you to declutter your
bedroom and your digital device
i think this is really really helpful
and the fact that it is placed in the
first lot of the templates just shows
how many people are using it right now
i mean i
really need to declutter yeah
and that's it for coda also please check
out koda with the link below and it is
completely free and i hope that with
coda you don't have to have a hundred
tabs open in your browser or
a hundred documents open in your laptop
now moving to the next tool which is a
tool that helps me to communicate with
the software engineers and that's
zeppelin
basically zapplin is available on
website and also it is a plugin for
figma
vaplin's website is at
app.zapplin.io
and if you want to communicate with a
software engineer and show that this is
the final design you can create first
project
web
create
and i will give it a title
tripma
and then i can select the screens that i
want to
upload for now just select three screen
as a demo
and i will right click
select plugins zeppelin
export
and select shipment
go back to zeppelin and you'll be able
to see the screens here
now when you click it it will show a lot
of details that's very helpful for the
front-end software engineers
and going back you can also divide these
screens into different sections using
the dividend sign in between
and name it
to the user flow you want to name it and
if you want to go deeper you can also
check out flows and style guide and this
software is also free to explore
now regarding communicating with
software engineers and front-end
engineers zapping is again just a tool i
think the most important thing is to
communicate before we do a design
project because a lot of time maybe
product manager suggested a feature
designers designer feature all the ui ux
are finished and then we go to engineers
and then we heard back that oh sorry
this is not going to happen soon
and yeah even though it's a lot of
communication it's always better than
going through a linear process and
knowing that your design will never be
implemented
right
and speaking of communication one
communication tool that i use all the
time it's slack
basically what slack does is that it
kind of replaces
email i personally really don't like
email because i just feel like email is
too heavy
especially when you have a lot of back
and forth communication when you ask one
question the person replies you and you
want to ask another question it just
becomes a never ending list
well it should really become a chat and
that's why i think slack is really
really helpful when it comes to
communication
so here's the interface i cannot show
you my work interface and that's why
this is a very empty look
basically you can just
send a message
like this
and i love the reaction little feature
you can always like react to other
people's message
by an emoji
that's great and i also ask for a lot of
design feedback on slack
sometimes i have this version a and this
version b that i don't know which one to
go for i'll just send it to three
designers and be like what do you think
for each version um and do you have any
design suggestions for me
i think it's a great thing to always ask
for other people's feedback
because no matter how good a designer
you are
you are you you represent one point of
view if you ask more people from more
point of view
i think it's just always going to make
it a little bit better and a little bit
more comprehensive so yeah ask for
design feedback
maybe on slack maybe on text maybe email
i don't care but yeah this is one thing
that i found helpful
now moving to the next tool that i use
as a ux designer that is zoom zoom is
for video chatting video conferencing so
for me a lot of design sessions actually
happens on zoom because it is a
collaborative session with other
designers product owners content
designers
and what i'll be doing as a new designer
is that i'll be sharing my screen so
other people can be commenting on my
design and add ideas to it and a lot of
times my work will just be sitting there
and try to realize other people's
thoughts which is definitely a
challenging process because
you know what other people are all
seeing your screen and you're just like
the only designer there making a lot of
unnecessary mistakes sometimes it's a
little bit embarrassing but again that's
my work something that i recently
learned is that but whenever you want to
say something you don't have to use your
mouth to click on mute you can just
press the space
this the space on the keyboard and it
will just temporarily unmute yourself
and if you don't use the space it will
just mute it again so that has been
something that's very helpful
another thing i realized is that
recently if you go to preferences go to
background and filters they have this
studio effect which can apply super
weird makeup to yourself and i really
don't suggest you to use it because i've
used it once and it just looks very
scary
i don't know why they design
this eyebrow
okay i just shared a super
useful tip
um
anyways another thing i like about zoom
is that you can always give reactions by
doing this reaction little thing
and just
give an emoji you know
a lot of time
i am an introvert i don't like to say a
lot in a meeting so i just always give
this emoji
to make people feel like i'm still here
i'm still listening and i'm still
supporting
and also for zoom please make sure that
when you first enter a company you set
up your zoom in a way so you're able to
share your screen because when i first
entered ebay i realized that my laptop
is not allowing to share screen on zoom
for some reason and i have to spend a
lot of time working with the it guy to
figure out how to make that happen
and finally the final two i want to
introduce you guys is microsoft outlook
and that's something i use every day for
email and for calendar because outlook
combined calendar and email all at once
if i want to book a meeting with someone
i'll be able to see that person's
calendar and when is that person
available if i want to book a meeting
with four people i can see all their
calendar and the slot that's available
on outlook so that's pretty useful for
me and i think it's also okay to book
meeting with yourself too you know
just say you are having a focused time
for two hours even though what i will be
doing is that i will be doing groceries
and again i think the best tool to use
as a ui ux designer is always our brain
it's just that we cannot put that into
our resume so to have some like tangible
software to know it's still a great way
to start if you want to enter this field
of ui ux design or if you want to become
a better uix designer
i also want to give a quick shout out to
hashida for helping me with today's
video she is a product manager at koda
she also has a youtube channel at
hershey bar so if you want to learn more
about what it's like to work in the tech
industry feel free to check out her
video and if you like my video don't
forget to subscribe like and comment
more contents coming up soon and see you
next time