In this YouTube video, Ankit Bhaskar outlines how aspiring and current UX designers can thrive in 2023 by adapting to four major shifts in the field. He begins by highlighting the soaring demand for UX talent and the heightened expectations from employers. He then identifies three evergreen soft skills—communication, problem‑solving, and collaboration—that remain essential at every career stage, providing concrete examples of each. Next, Bhaskar dives into the AI revolution, recommending three starter tools (ChatGPT, Adobe Firefly, and Framer AI) and pointing viewers to additional resources for leveraging generative AI in research, ideation, and prototyping. He moves on to the rise of immersive design, noting Apple’s Vision Pro launch and the accompanying Spatial Design guidelines as a catalyst for AR/VR opportunities. Finally, he discusses the evolution of advanced design systems, emphasizing Figma’s recent Compose features and its free design‑system course as a way to build scalable, component‑driven interfaces. Throughout, he supplies links in the video description for deeper learning, urging viewers to stay current with technology so that AI augments rather than replaces their design expertise.
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Hey everybody, hi, my name is Ankit Bhaskar. Welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is a place where I talk about design, tech, and everything. And today we're going to talk about how to become a UX designer in 2023. First of all, let's just try to understand the fact that becoming a UX designer in 2023 is not as same as that used to be back in years because a lot of which has been changed. So let me give you a list of everything that is changed in 2023 and how you can get started with it. The first important change is demand for UX designer. Right now in 2023, the demand for UX designer is sky high, and that is why the competition in the market is already high. Well, understand that to match up the level of expectations that the company are looking forward here in 2023 is very high. So to get started with, you can actually start with 3 important skills which is going to be evergreen irrespective of your seniority level, or you're a fresher, or you're just about to get started with your UX design career. These 3 important skills is going to be the most skill right from starting a journey as a UX designer to actually becoming a design lead. Those 3 skills are communication skills, problem-solving skills, and collaboration. Let's try to understand that irrespective of your career, your communication skills is going to be the most important skill because if you're not able to communicate very effectively, you'll never be able to share your ideas with other person. That is why you always need to get started with communication first. The second important skill is going to be problem-solving skill. and problem-solving skill is something that you're not really born with and you can acquire very easily. For example, problem-solving skill is all about asking right question to the right person at the right time, which is going to the root cause of the problem statement and only then trying to solve it and not just getting started with the problem statement as soon as you get it. Let's say, for example, your friend is calling you for a movie tonight. The first thing that you're going to do is not going to say, yes, I'm coming. You're going to ask multiple questions. Which movie is this? Where are we going? What is the cost of the movie? Who all are coming with us? So after asking all of these questions, only then you will decide whether you want to go forward for that movie or not. That is what problem-solving skill is all about— asking the crucial question that will help you understand the situation, and only then you can take informed decisions. Skill number 3 is collaboration skills. Well, as a UX designer, it's not your sole responsibility to come up with a solution for any problem statement. It's a team effort. As a UX designer, right from the start to becoming a design lead, you're going to work with multiple people. For example, the stakeholders, which can be your business people, CEO, CTO, the product manager who actually gives you all the requirements, your design lead who will actually give you small tasks for that specific requirement, your developer, your other fellow designer. So while working in a small or big organization, you have to work and collaborate with so many people. That is why collaboration is very important. So I'm going to share all the resources for learning these 3 important skills right in the description. You can check and visit later. So the change number 2 is AI revolution. By the time you're watching this video, there are thousands of AI tools that is already there in the market that can be used as a UX designer. To excel your career. And if you're not really sure about any AI tool, I'm going to share a couple of right now. AI tool number 1, ChatGPT. You need to get started with ChatGPT right away because it can help you with anything and everything, be it professional or a personal level. There are millions of things that you can do using ChatGPT, right from personality development to actually getting assignments from ChatGPT, generating problem statement, and millions of other things. If you want to strictly use ChatGPT for UX design purpose, I have actually made an entire video where I have explained multiple use cases right from generating a problem statement to actually going forward to doing all the research and generating all the information that is required to solve a problem statement. If you're interested, you can click here and view the video. Tool number 2 is going to be Adobe Firefly. You might have already heard about Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, which is used to create crazy amount of graphic images and videos. But just to kickstart your journey and start using AI tool, Adobe Firefly is the first important tool that you get started with. Over here in Adobe Firefly, you can do multiple things. For example, you can go forward and type something and you can actually generate images out of it. Well, Adobe Firefly not only helps you convert text to images, but there are so many other features that you can use. For example, creating a vector and changing the entire color scheme, and also generating amazing text effect that you can directly use in your graphic design work. The reason that I'm telling you to get started with Adobe Firefly first, because its generative fill feature is going to be used across in all the Adobe tools. For example, it is already integrated in Photoshop, and you can go for and actually select an image, give some prompt, and change the entire landscape of that image. The next important tool is Framer AI. Well, Framer did actually start with being a prototyping tool, then move forward to no-code website, but right now Framer has eventually ended up launching its own AI platform where you can actually give command and generate the entire website within splits of seconds. At the same time, not just a desktop version, you can actually create the desktop, tablet, and mobile version with one single prompt. So in order to understand how you can actually generate the entire interface and UI using multiple other tools which are already present in market, you should get started with Framer because it is very fast and it is available for you right now. So just to get started, make sure that you start with ChatGPT, Adobe Firefly, and Framer and combine all of this to actually upskill your UX/UI design skills. There are many other AI tools that you can use as a UX/UI designer. I'm going to list couple of them in the descriptions. Do check it out afterwards. Third important change is the actual AR/VR design, which was boomed a couple of years back. Now that in 2023, Apple has officially launched their most awaited tech product, which is Apple Vision Pro, which is actually an AR/VR headset. And due to the launch of Apple Vision Pro, the entire tech industry was actually designing for physical products, mobile, website, and your watches is now going to focus on immersive design, which is your actual virtual reality. And guess what? This is the most important time where you can get started with learning the VR experience. And in the same time, Apple have officially given the guidelines to design the VR experience, which is known as the Spatial Design. And all the guidelines are very effectively explained on their official website. So now that is the best time to get started with VR experience. You can visit Apple's official website and start learning all the principles of Spatial Design. I'm going to put all the links in the description so you don't have to worry about it. The fourth important change is Advanced Design System. Now traditionally, things were a lot different, but today by 2023, when people actually understand the importance of user experience design and providing an optimal experience to the end user, things have totally changed. Now companies are more focused on user-centered design approach and providing a personalized experience to their end users. And same thing cannot be done by traditional approaches of creating redundant UI elements. That is why to solve this complex problem statement, a complex design system is needed. And that is why design system is evolved a lot in previous 5 years, which can already be seen in Figma Compose 2023 where they have actually introduced couple of new features in terms of variable and reusing components. So just to simplify, a design system creates a reusable component, for example, a button, which can be actually used in multiple screens that you are using. And let's just say if you want to actually change the branding or style guide of your entire project, you can actually change the color or style guide at one single component, and the change is going to be done across the screens wherever that component has been used. This is actually one of the ways to design a scalable system. And to be very honest, I have actually seen people using non-components on multiple screens, and when they have to change a single color or font size, they are going and manually changing every colors and font on each and every screen. Imagine that screen being 200 or 500, right? It's going to take you an entire week or a month depending on how many people are actually doing that. And that is why to solve complex problem statement, you need to learn complex design system. But you don't have to worry at all because Figma has officially launched their own design system course, which is free of cost, and it covers anything and everything that you need to understand about design system. I'm going to share the same link again in the description so you don't have to worry about a thing. So if you want to become a UX designer in 2023, these are the 4 important changes and things that you need to keep in consideration. And if you keep yourself up to date with all the technological changes and start using AI for your advantage, no AI in the world can actually replace you as a UX designer. Until next time, this is Maynit Praskar signing off.
