Ep 162| Top 10 Tools for Product & UIUX Designers

If you ask me, tools are the greatest thing for a designer to really work efficiently in their product design role. Let's say if you have five or 10 interns, like let's say if you're a 15, have 15 to 20 interns working with you free of cost, would you say no for them? Would you really accept gladly their help? Right. So the tools are exactly the same thing, but with one caution. I'm recording you this podcast tools are not everything. We have to just use the tools. We should not allow the tools. Okay, in this podcast I'm going to be telling you top 10 tools which is really required for a product designer to really make yourself 50x to 100x faster. It's not only the 10 tools, it's along with that similar tools, what else you can use. So the total possibilities is close to 30 to 40 tools you're going to get today. So take a lot of notes, grab a notepad and additional note maker, we'll get into this podcast. The very first tool which I'm going to be telling you is Miro. Okay? M I R O Miro is a very beautiful tool where you can do lot of mind maps and you can create lot of workflows, information architecture, site maps, you can create a input output diagram, you can create all your decision making inputs for your website or an application very easily. Even if you're making a product design or anything, you need some tool to really map everything in a single canvas. The advantages of using Miro is you can have everything in one chart and you can arrange that into order and you can create like a frames so that it will run through like a ppt. And also you can put your hyperlinks, you can put your videos, you can put your pictures, sketches, you can draw a lot of wireframes very quickly using the ready made templates. And Miro is a beautiful tool. It's same like you are having a chart paper and sticky notes and sketch pens. Miro provides you intuitively a lot more things. Okay, this is the first tool in line with that Miro. I'll tell you some of the tools also which is like InVision. It's a very beautiful tool, you can try it out. I've tried this personally. It's a beautiful tool and there is a tool called figjam. Okay, in figma, if you're using there is a AI enabled tool which is called figjam, which does pretty much a similar job. But figjam has its own advantages and other features. Like you can have a timer, you can have a stopwatch wherein you can have a lot of things like let's say a plugins which is associated to your Figma files you can directly import there. So this is a pretty much similar softw which is for using mind maps and creating charts, flows, everything. Very first tool. The second tool, what you have to use as a designer is start using Excel Sheet, Word File, Pages sheet. Like let's say if you're using all the Google tools, Google Slides, Google Pages, Google Sheets. So it would be really, really good guys, I'll tell you why. See we are not, we are not people who work like, who gather lots of data. They typically use these tools. But let me tell you guys, without data designing is not possible. If you're not understanding data, if you're not able to visualize the data, you won't be able to clearly penetrate the design decisions. Okay, let me repeat you. A lot of designers don't take it very seriously. They think data analytics people take this role. No guys, design is all about doing research and finding out the numbers and stats and piercing through the information through the data. Without data you won't be able to pierce a tree. See, if you're just piercing a tree with your hand, do you think it's possible? No. Right. But if you pierce it to a spear it will be much easier for you. So data is like a spear, you need to understand how it works. So using Excel Sheet, this kind of a sheet, the pages and all these things will be much useful for you. Not for just data tracking, also for creating word documents, also for creating very simple ppts and slideshows. This is much useful being a designer for your office weekly presentation. The third important tool what you can use is Figma and Adobe xd. I'm not going to go deep guys. Every designer knows it but it's one of the prominent tool. I would say Adobe XD is better because it's used by prominent industries. Its firewall is good, its cloud based services are great and Adobe has a licensed firmware which is like very protected for corporate people. Figma, like a lot of startup studios, MSME industries, a lot of people in a very small scale sector uses it for even freelancing because it's affordable as well. But Adobe XD is slightly on a higher side cost. Okay, so the the fourth important tool what I would suggest you is Canva. It's a beautiful photo editing tool and you can use it even if you're a non designer. No problem guys. All the options are intuitive in Canva and you can use a similar tool called Photoshop. You can use Illustrator. See, I'll tell you family of tools, okay, it's not like I'm going to count these tools. If you count it will go to 30 to 40 tools in this whole podcast. But I'm just giving you one important tool and the following tool similar which you can use. Okay, Photoshop is a little bit expensive, Illustrator is a little bit expensive. But Canva is free. Okay, the free version of Canva is pretty much enough to do all your design works. But the higher end version of the Canva is little bit, I mean little bit costly. But you can use the free tool is what my point is. Based on your budget, you can able to fire upon higher versions of Canva or even Photoshop or Illustrator where you can buy it. Okay, so Photoshop and Illustrator has a much more options in order to access your pen tools, your shading tools, your sketching tools, your rendering tools. In your image distortion can be done much easier. But Canva has its limitation. But for basic designer it's good. The fifth important tool, what I would say is use Sketch Pro, guys. See if you're using digital methods to sketch, I would say hand sketch is really better. But if you want to use digital methods, you can use Sketch Pro, you can use procreate. So these are all. Procreate is very good if you're a, if you're having iPad, if you're someone who is traveling, if you're someone who is like wanted to explore and you wanted to just sketch people on the go get, get, get the sketches done on the live situation. You don't want to waste time if you don't have your notebooks. Procreate is the best tool where you can use it in your iPads. Okay, the sixth important tool, what I would say is use a tool called Axe X and there is a tool called usability.com and there is a tool called WCAG. See guys, these, these tools are pretty much very easy to use. It's for testing out your website, your applications to your user. Usability.com has a very good questionnaire kind of a format wherein you can import your screens, your applications, your website options or where whatever you wanted to test it with your user, you can able to pretty much read it there. So you can define some questions in pre tax. And what these tools will do is it will try to pretty much understand how the users are behaving. Particularly a tool called Axe Axe which helps you enable heat maps like let's say in a particular corner of a screen, how much users are going and clicking in that option, how much users are clicking on the top, how much users are clicking on the left, right. So you will know where our users behaviors and patterns are looking like. So this kind of a tools will be helping you enable testing with your user in order to reiterate and build your product. Okay, It's a productivity tool. The sixth important tool, particularly when you are a designer is try to use LinkedIn, try to use monsters, try to use Naukri, try to use indeed, try to use glass doors, try to use intention if you are someone who is fresher. So what this pretty much does is guys, it helps you job enabled and visible to the social market. Okay, you can find lot of people, you can find recruiters, you can find a lot of professional peoples and you can find jobs. Particularly with respect to your experience. Your fresher people are looking for you. Guys don't just tell like there is no job available in design. It's a completely. What do you call? It's an insecurity field. What you have in your mind. There are 65,000 startups which have registered in India in this last year. So imagine how much vacancies would be there. If startups are that much. Do you think how much MSMEs will be there? Do you think how much corporates will be there? Do you think how much design independent studios will be there? There are close to 1500 design studios which I've encountered. So it's your inability to find out who's the real potential match for you and apply them. Even if you are at a scale of 3 out of 10, there would be a studio which will be out of your scale of 3 or 4. Right? You can start with them, you can eventually improve to 5, 7, 8 and 10. Right? So just start off with something, don't just have an insecurity feel. And the eighth important tool I would say is specifically I'll tell you Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Guys. Okay, LinkedIn. I'll add it here because these are all the tools which can help you connect with people. If you connect with professionals, if you connect with right designers, if you connect with right minded people, if you, if you connect with community, the knowledge and the enablement, what you have in design will grow up like anything. You'll tend to see perspective things in design. You will not be in an isolated way. You'll tend to see a big picture. You'll come across people in LinkedIn or any professional platforms where they'll be able to help you out in an even more better way. Sometimes you can't learn everything in your office. Sometimes you can't learn everything in online YouTube and always sometimes people will help you. You know what? People to people help is most most amazing. And people to people help is somewhat is called actually a mentoring or a peer support. Okay. So people tend to learn much faster compared to any other chat GPT or Google search or any other thing, guys, okay? Because somebody is more giving you a personalized feedback you would have understood what's your pain area. Even I got a lot of LinkedIn connection everything. I pick only few students to help them out. Genuinely what they really stuck are okay. And also the ninth important tool I would say is start your own YouTube channel. Guys, it doesn't cost you anything. Okay? Start your YouTube channel and just post whatever one or two videos per month. Just one video short two or three minutes. Just introduce yourself and tell what you know about design. Okay, I'll tell you what is the reason. If you're using this tool, you will be getting a lot more social presence. When people see a social presence and you link it to your LinkedIn page, they will have a more trust and credibility while talking to you. How do you build contact with different, different designers across industry? Like let's say if you're a one year experienced guy, two years experienced guy. How would a 10 years experienced designer have an interest to talk with you unless you have something very solid. So just don't get frightened guys, I'll tell you. You can start your own podcast channel in Spotify. It's a, it's a very simple. In five minutes you can start a podcast channel. In just half an hour you can create a YouTube channel and start posting your first video. You can record it in your own webcam in your laptop, you can record it in your mobile phone. It doesn't take so much time. So in fact Spotify offers you a lot of free tools inside their application. When you're opening your laptop, you can pretty much record their audio. You can add background music, you can just post it and distribute it today itself. So podcasting has been very difficult guys few years back. So now like you know there is a, there is a podcast channel called Anchor Pods Bean which takes huge amount of time to redistribute in all the channels. But let me tell you guys, I'm just creating my podcast and I'm distributing to almost five to six different channels right now. My podcast is in Spotify. It's in, it's an Apple Ipods, it's in Amazon Music, it's in cloud Cast Radio, it's in another platform Google, it's an Amazon Music. So lot of platforms that I can able to distribute easily through the Spotify. So you can able to use it. It doesn't cost you anything. Guys, I'll tell you if you really teach something or if you really talk about any topic first you get a lot of knowledge about it. You're not doing to impress others. You're just doing it for yourself. You can create a very simple course in Udemy or a skillshare or anything and you can just post it. Guys. Okay, Udemy doesn't take so much of cost. It's a free account. You can create and you can be a one very good course. Like let's say if you want to really become good in digital sketching, you can take two to three videos in that digital sketching. How like you people who are really looking for your content may get benefited. Can I tell you guys three benefits you will get? First is you will first do a lot of research before you teach that topic so you get strong. Second is your confidence goes up. Like anything you feel that sense of honor and pride that your content is being helped by some other people. Third is people will find you very easily. Guys, the moment if you say in interviews or anything that you have a YouTube podcast channel and you also teach design in some of the best platforms like Skillshare Udemy, the way in which people will look at you will be so different. Trust me guys, this works. Okay. One of the amazing things so the tenth important tool what I would suggest you is you can start using Premiere Pro. Guys, after effects I'll tell you these are all the beautiful video editing tools because nowadays sending portfolios and creating some behance profile is not enough. At least a video showcasing your project, your one or two slides or your important part of your product or an application or a website to just scroll through and add a background music and give your voiceover. Okay? Don't just use any professional voiceover. So what happens is people get to see that liveness in your project. West one minute video can cover you guys. Hey. Hi, I'm Jagdish. I got 8.5 years of experience and I did a project on waste management system. We collected data regarding that across the city of Bangalore and then we created an application through which every people in the Bangalore can able to contribute to this waste collection system where we have designed very easy and intuitive. Through this application we have segregated almost one ton of waste in the last one month. This is my application. Go and read it. This is my case study. Go and find it. See, now the people will be more happy to go and see your case study. And probably you will get selected or hired for that job or for that intern, for the internship interview or application, whatever you're applying. So there is a reason why I'm saying you guys, you need to have that professionalism touch, okay? In fact I'm going beyond 10 tools now. So the 11th tool, what I would suggest you is if you InDesign you can use, you can use InDesign to create layouts and documents and good big browsers for your project or you can create a big case study for your envelope or an application. Because if you're a graphic designer or if you are a product designer who wanted to really make a very good case study out of your project, definitely InDesign is a good tool. It's like creating a booklet, continuous pages. You can able to do it. It would be much easier to do it in Canva, but I would say InDesign is specifically built for that. It's a very robust software. The twelfth important tool, what I would suggest you is you can use a tool called Yoodli AI. I'll tell you the benefit of it guys, okay? See if you are someone who wants to really make PPT in a very quicker span of time, use this tool which is called Yvo DLI AI. Okay? So what you can do is you can go to the this website and then you can create a free account. Just type out what PPT you wanted to create, just give that keyword and remaining you will see the magic. The AI does its job in just 60 seconds it will generate a PPT for you. How much ever content you want, 10 slides, 20 slides, no problem. It will give you if you wanted to your content to get into a PPT in a neat mode. Yeah, Udlie does this similarly. It's a beautiful tool guys. You can use it and similar tool. What I would suggest you is Keynote. Okay? People are using Mac, they can able to use Keynote, people are using Windows. PowerPoint presentation is really pretty much enough, guys. Okay, so these are all the presentation making tools and the 13th important tool which I'm going to be telling you is okay, which is called Chat GPT and Google Bot. See guys, Google search is not simple. Google search is not really required for us right now or the YouTube search because that's a clumsy of information that when you search for a word you get a huge amount of data. You Get a huge amount of information which is not relevant and you need to do another analysis and research to find it out what you want. But Google Bard and ChatGPT does a very specific search based on the prompt you gave and then you get to have a lot of information information. The more specific you give, the more error free you give, the more better clear communication. I wanted this output chat GPT in the form of tabler column. CHAT GPT generates a table column and give you this output chat GPT converts whatever information you want and it can provide you like anything. This one two tools, what I've told you guys, Udlie and chat GPT and what do you call googlebot. This can make you 50x productive than any of your co designers. Trust me, this effectively works. Okay, and the 14th and the last important tool which I would suggest you. So most, most mind boggling tool guys, if you use it, you'll be a next version of yourself as a designer. You are you excited to really know that tool, that one magic tool which is going to really flip your design career into a next level. Hey Jagdish, what is this here? Please tell me you said chatgpt yoodli and then you said lot of things. But what can be beyond this? Let me give you guys, okay? A lot of people will be surprised, lot of people will be thinking, lot of people will be sad if I say that. But there are some people who really get excited by that. Can I tell you that your pen and your pencil, your paper and your thinking and your time. This is the most, most, most amazing tool which you have inbuilt with you. If you are not using this tool and then if you're using all the 14 tools, whatever I'm giving you, it's not going to make any sense for you. You're not going to become a great designer. You will become a copycat designer. You will become a version 2.0 designer. You will become something like a version 2.1. You will not become your own version of your own creativity. I'm telling you again guys, tools are meant to be used, not to be loved. I've seen a lot of people using Adobe XT, Figma, ChatGPT for there have been dwelling it for hours and hours not getting a proper output because they were not satisfied, because they were not internalizing what is the real problem they got and what are the methods they solve the moment when you pen down everything, when you just sketch it out in a paper, when you just think it from your own brain initially and then you follow some design process, take a tool and then you approach and then you do it. You will see a much more clarity in the project what you do. I hope this tools are pretty much helpful for you, particularly the last one. Okay. Even if you don't like, that's the real truth guys. Because I've seen people who do a lot of hand work when they map physical chartworks, when they map a physical sketching their thought process is like very, very novel and unique rather than people who just sit in digital, digital, digital. That's okay guys, to a certain extent. Okay, so just think about it. I hope this podcast would have given you some clarity on what are the tools which you can use being a designer in order to become top one in your industry. Okay. I also recommend if you find this podcast useful, you can recommend to your friends and right now 31 countries people are listening to my podcast and a lot of new listeners are coming and 6,000 plus close to impressions are created guys in the last two months. And I would say if you need my mentorship support to learn all these things in a very specific way. In fact I teach 13 to 14 different tools in my mentorship program intensively for the people who are very very interested. Okay. If you want to sign up for my mentorship program, you can send an email to dfc dfc designforchangemail.com me or my team will first have an interaction with you and if we find you are really interested and enthusiastic and then you are qualified for our program, we'll make sure we'll take for our program because we are taking in right now a new batch and we don't need lot of people guys. We are only taking few students to help out them because we wanted to really transform them. Recently one of my student have got 13.5 lpa and he is from already 8 lp and then he got it in just a span of 10 days. In fact, another student was also working with me. She's going to attend interviews and I'm just updating your current thing. Lot of students have got results already but the point is new updates are really coming up and you'll see lot of successful people coming in our community. Okay. And if you need my support in doing that, send that email out and watch out for my further episodes and get notified in Spotify and Apple guys. Okay? Thank you so much. Take care guys. All the best.