16 tools I use everyday as a Senior Product Designer

Hello everyone, this is one video that I've wanted to make for a while now, and I'm glad that I'm finally making it. In today's video, I'm going to be sharing what's in my toolbox as a UX designer and why I think every UX designer should have these tools in their toolbox in 2024. I'll be breaking down these tools into how I use them for productivity, discovery and research, ideation and prototyping, and sourcing design inspiration. I should also mention that none of the tools mentioned in this video are sponsored, at least not yet. With that being said, my name is Samuel Fabayo and I'm a senior Senior Product Designer helping designers achieve their highest potential faster. Let's get into it. For productivity, the first tool I use is my lovely notepad, which I use to do literally everything from taking notes to planning my day and just documenting the rawest form of my ideas. It is my most trusted tool because it's the only tool I go back to when I'm least productive because it allows me to pen my thoughts in its most natural state. Then when I need to block out large chunks of time or schedule meetings, I use Google Calendar, not because Google Calendar is the most amazing calendar tool out there, but because it's easily integrated with my other tools in the Google ecosystem. Another tool I use for time blocking is the Apple Timer. Similar to the way I use Google Calendar to block large chunks of time and multiple times together, I use Apple Timer to block out smaller chunks of time so that I can get into like deep focus work. So I use Apple Timer to block out like 15 minutes to 90 minutes to be able to like get that direct focus and work on something only for a long time. This is because I get distracted very, very easily. And if I'm not using these time block mechanisms, in the way I use them, it's very, very possible that I end my day without actually being able to achieve my goals for the day. Then I use Notion to organize the ideas and thoughts that I have scribbled into the notepad into project spaces. Notion is also the documentation tool at my full-time job, so I don't have to jump tools. I can't stress how important Notion has been to my workflow generally, and I'm not even scratching the surface when it comes to how I use it. Notion is used in a whole lot of other ways, but I basically just use it to organize my thoughts and put my thoughts into project spaces and also organize those project spaces I can be able to like get like to-do lists and manage everything I do from there. Notion has a lot of use cases that I'm not even getting into, so it is highly recommended. Lastly, for productivity, I use a tool called CleanShot to take amazing screenshots of my computer. This tool is so good because of how it makes taking screenshots so much easier and it takes it to like another level. It's like a tool that you don't know you need until you start using it. Since I've been using CleanShot, I can easily go on anything I'm working on, grab a screenshot of that, and I can even arrange the screenshots in the kind of way I want to make it look very presentable. I can put annotations on it. Whenever I want to do quick screen recordings, I can record using CleanShot as well. I can do recordings and convert these recordings to MP4 format or even a GIF format if I want something that looks more like a GIF. It just helps me to communicate clearly with my teammates, with stakeholders, and with my clients as well in a very professional manner so that whenever I share screenshots with them, it looks as if I have put some thought into sharing this feedback or into sharing this idea with them just because of how clean CleanShot makes these shots actually look. CleanShot is an amazing tool and I got it for a free one-time fee of $29. During the discovery stage of some projects, I use Google Forms to create surveys and collect data about anything that I want to know about that project or any kind of research that I'm trying to do on that project. And in cases where I want to do more with this data or I want to be able to synthesize this data and analyze it properly, I also use Airtable to collect feedback. Most times I use Airtable in cases where I want to be able to embed a feedback form into a website. For example, I use Airtable to collect feedback on Folio, a website that I've created to showcase the portfolios of top designers globally in one place. So Airtable helps me to collect feedback about the experience of users on that website and even enable users to submit their portfolio so that I can get more portfolios that can be uploaded on the website. I'm going to share more about Folio later on in this video. I already talked about how I'm locked into the Google ecosystem, So 90% of the time, whenever I have meetings or whenever I want to have any kind of video conferencing or when I want to have user research sessions that involve me speaking to the users or anytime I'm doing anything that has to do with video conferencing, 90% of the time I use Google Meet. This is because again, it is already in the Google ecosystem. So I don't have to leave the ecosystem to go and look for another video conference tool. The other 10% of the time I use tools like Zoom, maybe because that's what the client requires or that is the tool that is required for me to be able to make some progress on what I'm trying to do at the time. But in most cases, I use Google Meet. I've also started using ChatGPT as part of my research and discovery process. I mostly use ChatGPT in conducting secondary research to find out some of the existing information or research or data that is already online about any particular problem that I'm trying to solve. And there are so many other ways that you could introduce ChatGPT into your workflow as well, but this is how I'm using it. I'm also thinking about other ways that I can get to use this amazing innovation into helping me to be my co-designer, to be my co-writer, to be my co-researcher so that I can speed up my work process and speed up my workflow. And as the model for ChatGPT improves, I'm sure that there will be a lot more things that the tool can do in the future to help designers get from discovery to prototyping really fast. Similar to my notepad, my favorite ideation tool is my sketchpad. And this is the sketchpad right here. I really love this sketchpad just because of how it feels. I feel like it feels so raw. And it feels like it doesn't expect me to put in refined ideas into it just because of how rough the COVID here looks and just because of how it looks as well. And actually, I just realized that I never started using this sketchpad from the front page. I started using it from the back page. So yeah, this looks really good. It has like brown papers in it and it just makes me feel like I can always sketch my ideas quickly. I don't need to think about refining those ideas just because of how raw this sketchpad looks as well. Actually, which one is the front? Is it this one or is it this one? Because I mean, it looks the same to me apart from the fact that this has cut-on color and this doesn't. So let me know which one you think is the front. I started using it from here. Another addition tool which has been one of my favorite tools in recent times is Excalidraw. This is such an amazing tool and I don't know why I didn't know about this tool before now. Excalidraw is an online whiteboarding tool which is so easy to use. It's like a digital version of the sketchpad, and the reason I find this tool so useful is how quickly I get to mock up my ideas without thinking about too much details. I don't have to think about measurements, detailed font size or font type and colors. It's the perfect tool for quick illustrations and explanations, and since I've been using this tool, I've seen an increase in how well I'm able to like refine my ideas and also come up with completely new and novel ideas. The next tool is Figma, which is the only prototyping tool that I use. I've spoken about Figma so many times, so you shouldn't be surprised that Figma is showing up here. It is the industry standard for UX design and prototyping, and every designer in 2024 should learn how to use Figma. Figma also has the Figma Mirror app, which helps you to preview the prototype that you have created in Figma just as the way the user would on a mobile app. Still speaking of Figma, I also use FigJam, which is the workshopping and brainstorming tool that has been embedded into Figma. This is almost like a tool on its own. But of course, it makes sense for Figma to add this as their suite of tools because teams can easily just brainstorm in FigJam, workshop in FigJam, and then bring all their brainstorming and workshopping to come and create prototypes in Figma. I find FigJam also very, very useful to be able to think about raw ideas, to be able to collaborate with teams, and to be able to get feedback and ideas really quick. I don't use FigJam for user flows and user mapping as much, but I use it whenever I want to try to make sure that all my thinking and ideation is in one space. Right. So it is not my favorite tool for user flows and ideation. I do more of that whenever I'm sketching on my notepad. But yeah, I still highly recommend FigJam if you're thinking about a tool that you can use for brainstorming sessions and workshop sessions, majorly because it's already part of Figma. You don't need to get another tool to be able to do that. Then I use Framer to design and publish websites without writing a single line of code. I started using Framer sometime around 2023, and honestly, again, I don't know why I haven't been using this tool earlier. I've heard so much about it, and when I was about to start working on building Folio, I thought about how can I do this without having to involve any kind of developer or without having to write any kind of code. And that was when I decided to try out Framer, and to my surprise, this tool is so amazing because it shares the same design principles with Figma. It's not so hard to learn if you know how to use Figma already. I used Framer to build Folio from scratch without writing any single line of code. Everything from creating a waitlist page, adding multiple pages for portfolios, receiving portfolio submissions, and collecting feedback from visitors was all done in Framer. Let me know in the comment section if you'd like to see how I used Framer to build Folio. I use 2 main tools for my design inspiration, and that is Dribbble and Mobbin. I try to keep my tools for design inspiration limited because I don't want to get stuck in an inspiration loop. That way I can get to creating much faster. I use Dribbble to find abstract design explorations that can extend my imagination beyond common design patterns. A lot of people believe that designs on Dribbble can be unrealistic, but sometimes I want to see these unrealistic designs so that I can find interesting design ideas to explore whenever I'm trying to work on something, just so that I am not closing up my mind and being stuck in using the same design patterns to solve different problems. Mobbin, on the other hand, is great to get realistic designs from the apps that we use every day all over the internet. Examples of apps that you can find on Mobbin are apps like TikTok, Instagram, Airbnb, and even web apps like Shopify, Canva, and the likes. It's such an important tool for my workflow because of how frequently updated it is and how much design thinking has gone into making it usable for designers. I also think it is fairly priced, so if you want to join the paid tier, you can join that as well. I think it's one of the few tools that I have a yearly subscription for, and it has really helped my workflow a lot. Easily, I can get to find almost any design inspiration that I'm looking for on Mobbin, as long as I want something that truly existing and realistic. These are all the tools that are in my toolbox as a UX designer. What are the tools in your own toolbox, or which tools are you surprised that I didn't mention in this video? Let me know in the comments and I'll be sure to check them out.