Ep 314- What next skill to learn as a UIUX deigner_Confusion clarified

If you're already a designer who are stuck what skills and tools to learn and you are not sure what is your current situation and status and what is the next day plan and what is the next week plan and what skills you need to learn and when you have to apply for the job. If you're completely zoned out being a UI UX and product designer, let me tell you, this is exactly the right podcast for you. With this we'll jump into the topic. Welcome guys. Welcome to the Design for Change podcast. Thank you for staying tuning here. Please make sure you subscribe in Apple and Spotify for this to get more episodes like this. Today we have a very important topic getting zoned out. Not knowing what skills to study being a designer. Right, because many people are binge watching in the YouTubes, they are taking courses and they are watching many mentors following people Instagram reels, everything they're doing, they're watching workshops and all these things. But when you go on a very personal level, what I understand is people don't lack knowledge. What people lack is clarity. What people lack is what they need to do now, what they need to do tomorrow in order to make sure they're getting their first goal to get into the industry. Mostly the freshers are facing this problem. I would say mid level and experienced people also face this problem after they lose the job. Okay. But for all of them, this podcast is going to address that. So how to decide what to learn next as a designer? This is all coming into one particular point. See, let me tell you guys first I'll talk about the basic concept. Okay? Skill gap is very important to first understand. First of all, where are you right now? You need to write your current skills like let's say you know the skills about what is mean by user research. Write it down. Okay. By the time I'm talking about this podcast, it's good that if you're having a notepad and pen, if you write it down it'll be more better. Second target, what kind of an industry and the role you wanted. Let's say if you're a junior designer, you wanted to go to senior UI UX design role. Write it down and let's say you find out one industry. There are six different types of industries available. There's six different type of niches available. One of the healthcare niche and the another one is a business niche. And the another one is the wealth and financial niche. Okay. And the other one is a career and education niche. And the other one is creativity niche. The other one Is a health relationship niche. Okay, so there are multiple niche available. Each of your industry will fall under this broad categories only. Inside this niche there'll be a micro niche industries called like let's say financial technology with respect to investment stock trading, banking, Edutech with respect to school education, digital education offline. So many industries are available. Entertainment, mass media, everything is all underneath this particular segments. So choose one particular industry, choose the role what you want to play. Okay, now most important thing, write down the gap between these two areas. Let's say if you're currently having user research as a skill. Currently you know prototyping, currently you know how to make a wireframes. That is the three skills you got right now. But the industry what you are trying to choose, let's say if it is fintech, fintech industries, what they really require. You can just open ChatGPT and put what are the FinTech UI UX designers are really requiring? What are the top three skills? What are the top four skills they require? You can just put it in chat GPT and chatGPT5 has released the latest version. It will give you to the point exact skill set. Now you understood what is your current situation. You understood where you wanted to go and you understood the gap. This is exactly very very important. Most designers they just randomly go and watch videos post. That is the big problem. So invest on particularly taking one skill, let's say wireframe and let's take user flow journey mapping. Okay? In fact user flow and journey mapping is one of the crucial steps if you want to get into the fintech industry. If you wanted to get into the like, let's say, let's take another industries like healthcare, you should be damn good in doing research. User research. Then also the task analysis, user flow journey, everything is important. But I would say the primary skill is user research. If you are a healthcare designer, you should know what is the real problem with respect to doctor patient and the product level, right? So determine your industry, determine your skill set, determine your current gap. With that the basic concept is done clear. Now it's all about the mindset shift. See guys, skills are not trophies. They're just currencies of you people only trust you based on the skills what you have, right? So the only right skills get you paid. So stop randomly going and focusing your attention in multiple skills. Rather than that, try to focus on the top three skill which you wanted to go as a. Let's say you wanted to go as a senior UI UX designer in a fintech companies. What are the Top three skill which you require first you need to learn note it down. Then you go very deep into it. Take a particular weekend and try to go very deep into it. Okay, stop thinking much guys, okay? Because what happens is if you think more, you will unnecessarily get stressed. Only will this skill really bring me a lot of clarity, Is it okay, can I learn this skill? Somebody is saying this tool is better, this skill is better. Stop it. Make a point. That top three skill is required for you and you need to learn that. Or else what happens is you keep drifting away. You will not be able to create a high value project or anything. Okay, so now what you need to do is after you find the industry, after you find the designation role, what you want after the top three skill set you find now you need to take one particular problem statement to use these three skills to solve it. You can take any problem in fintech, healthcare, edutech, small problem. You can in fact learn the skills in just one week. It's possible. Okay, with that concept I'll go into the third part which is skill set breakdown. First I talked about the core concept. Second I talked about the mindset. Third I'll talk about the skill set. So what are the core skill set? Let's say you are very. You wanted to become good in UX research. You wanted to become good in user interaction design. Principles like let's say information architecture, accessibility, interaction design, whatever. Make sure you also analyze the business angle towards it. Without business angle, if you start targeting on any companies, it goes waste. It goes exactly waste. Okay? It goes exactly waste and you need to be little careful about that. Are we clear about it? So once if you're not able to get this point, it creates a big problem for you. Business skills requires metrics, tracking conversion ratios, what are the retention ratio, what are the opt in rates? If you're designing a web page, website or landing page, you should know what is mean by opt in rate, how much people are getting converted in that. So understand your nature of business and try to take out that business terminologies. It doesn't fit for all. Fintech industries has a business way of tracking the metrics very differently. E commerce industry has a business metrics very different. So please look at that. Third thing comes skills tools. Okay, so now based on the skill set, based on the designation, based on the core skills, what are the tools you require? Okay, some companies use Adobe xt, some companies use Figma, some company use just a notion, some companies use only Miro to just create a Basic wireframes because their designer is going to develop that. I mean the developer is going to develop that. You just need to give the mockups and wireframes. Some companies use analytical tools. Lot like Google sentimental analysis maze.com usability.com axe.com so find out what is really the need of that hover for that particular industry and the skill set you require. So don't tell always I'll only learn this tool and people has to expect me to do this tool. No industry keeps changing. Seven years before there is nothing called figma. Okay, at the time Adobe XT was used a lot. Now Figma is used predominantly. Okay, More importantly, after two to three years, figma AI is going to come and it's going to be used by everybody. After three to five years another tool will come. After seven years another tool will come. So it's not about tool, it's about what is your current need of the hover for your particular industry and what you wanted to ultimately learn from that. That's the most important aspect. Once you determine that, then you focus on that particular one week plan to learn that particular tools called Miro Notion Figma prototyping software like Protopy Createy AI like let's say you can learn lovable, you can learn cloudy AI to build prototypes, you can learn any tool with respect to doing particularly research like Perplexity. You can use Google Bard, you can use ChatGPT5, you can use this copilot. So use whatever tools you want to learn that particular thing. Tools will take not more than one or two days to learn guys. Okay, just keep in mind once you're clear about this, then you take about career skills. What do I need? I'm very much lagging in interview, I'm very much lagging in portfolio, I'm very much lagging in storytelling, I'm very much lacking in talking in English, I'm very much lacking in negotiation skills. So in order to meet your business goals, in order to meet your core skills, in order to get into this role with this salary, what are the tools you required? What are the career level skills you required? You need to write it down. Example, if you're a fintech designer, you need definitely a good storytelling, you need to have good visualization skills. You should be able to present your projects in a damn good way in portfolio. Very simple. Okay, so that is what is a gap part which you need to build with respect to skill set and then you go and work on tools. Now because tools is very important, you cannot use your thought Process to tell to the people. You can only show it through a tool. So there you can use Miro Notion, Google Sheets or PPTs or maybe InDesign or Photoshop or Illustrator or Canva on all these things to present your final work. There are also many AI tools like beautiful AI then gamma app. So these are all Lumen 5 Lucidchart. So these are all beautiful tools to represent your work. Also in fact if you would like to show your work in a form of video, you can also use this particular tool called Sora. Okay. It's available in chat GPT. You can also use this tool called Weed. You can also use this tool called Loom. You can screen share and record a video and you can tell your stories and present it in your portfolio. Websites. Yeah you can just record 1 or 2 minutes video for your project. You can send it to the recruiter putting it in your YouTube as a unlisted video and share it. People would be loved to interact with you the moment when you have video for your project, right or not. So practice these tools, record it as a video, put it in your landing page, put it in your portfolio and try pitching it to the people. This is where you can able to touch and use the tools more effectively so that you can close that skill gap. Right? So now we are ending this podcast. The first what I told you about the core concept, find out the industry, find out the skill set, find out the gaps in that particular skill set. Second is a mindset towards shifting you into the whole way of solving a problem and trying to understand that skill set is like a currency for you. Third part I talked about the skill set with respect to core skill set, business skill set, tools as well as the career skill set with projecting to the particular respective industry. Fourth, I told you about the tools usage and implementation. After you complete this, the final thing what you need to do is take a one week time like let's say today. If you're starting up this learning process for the next one week, find out a huge big gap in any one of your industry. Day 2 and 3 try to work on that particular research part. Try to build all the fundamental skills, tools, skills required for you to solve that particular problem with respect to online data, chat, GPT and all these things. Day 4 Try to do a small mini project. Try to understand the problem statement. Try to work on this particular methods and the skills what you are going to learn and then you can use the micro learning to implement this particular tools and skills, whatever you learned and show it to your mentor in the 5th or 6th day and try to get some feedback and 6th and 7th day please work on that reiterating part and refine this project. Unless until you have a mentor or a guide or accountability partner, you will never know what you did is correct or not. Till now the podcast would have given you some clarity with respect to doing that what next to be learned and not. But the point is if you're not able to have a mentor and a guidance, you will not be able to take it down forward into implementing this into a real time project. Once you implement into a real time project then you can Publish it in LinkedIn portfolio Social media so that you can get a public credibility to start talking to the recruiters and then you're going to make a big impact out of it. With this podcast I want to ask you an important question. What is a single pain point or a bottleneck which is holding you back right now to not learn that skill? What are the visible proof would you have in the next seven days to show how to fix it? If you don't have the answer, why don't you come and attend my next Sunday workshop where I'll teach you how you can break down the skills. I'll make you do live activities, I'll show you live case studies and examples. I'll give you prompts and AI tools to make you do the projects. Also live in front of me so that you're getting super clarity on what next to be learned. What are the one goal you wanted to focus on the next one year and the next three months and what kind of an effort per day you can able to put in order to reach that particular goal. I hope this podcast would have made sense for you. Thank you for attending this. Thank you for listening to this particular podcast. I would highly recommend you to give a comment on what did you learn and the takeaways in this podcast. The big takeaways will get a gift and rewards and hoodies from hoodies and some of the special gifts from our Design for Change team and mainly come and watch our workshop. It's just a 99 rupees. You can get a big impact of four hours value over there so that I go very deep into each of this concept. If you would like to take our personalized mentorship support, you have to become eligible by watching that workshop. Because we don't have much slots to take for personalized mentoring, we only can able to choose few people who are very dedicated and interested towards doing endless time. Okay. So thank you so much guys. With that we are coming to the end of this podcast. I'll see you in the next episode. Make sure you subscribe in Apple and Spotify and give Best Star Best 5 star rating in Apple and Spotify so that we can able to see and encourage our podcast to more people and also comment your one big pain point also which you would like to be addressed in the next podcast. Thank you. All the best. Take care. Bye Bye.