What is your favourite product right now? and how would you make it better? Let us know in the comments below! 👇 If you're just thinking about starting a UX career, check out our video on how to get started in UX Design: 📺 th-cam.com/video/t0aCoqXKFOU/w-d-xo.html And if you want more links / resources / tips & hacks like this, sign up for our FREE weekly UX / UI Design focused newsletter, here 👇 📝aj-smart.ck.page/21100f1c73 👀
Spotify! The ability to listen to similar music but not have to build playlists is a game changer for me. I never got into iTunes for that reason, and Pandora would get hyper specific to one song I liked and then the "station" was too granular. I love the Spotify service but I would strip so much functionality from it. Less is more... "faves", "add to queue", "add to playlist", "follow a user", differing functionality and experiences between podcast episodes vs songs. Drives me batty but I love the value of the app! I would standardize how you interact with episodes and songs. Analytics permitting, I would remove the social aspect of seeing what people listen to completely. Too much screen real estate dedicated to the social piece and I don't care what people are listening to. My hypothesis is that people's music preferences are so hyper specific that they don't care about other listeners. They display everything by album like it's still 1990, I want to listen to the hits, if it's good enough I might view the album. Ok...I'm realizing I should redesign this for fun....
I’ve been working as a UX/UI Designer (aka Product Designer) in Silicon Valley for almost 12 years. I only got the questions you said in your video that are key in a job interview ONE time, from Facebook. So, if you’re reading this comment, here’s what I learned to be successful in a job interview. Relax, be yourself, don’t be afraid to fail at getting the job, or to say something that later you’re going to regret because it was wrong, don’t let fear cloud your mind, get a good rest and answer questions the best you can, balancing your answers between what the hiring manager or interviewer want to hear, and what you actually know and believe to be a good answer. Don’t try to be too friendly, too serious, and don’t be arrogant, just aim at having a good conversation where you are confident in your skills and knowledge. Personality matters. Always willing to listen and learn. If you don’t move to the next round is fine, up to the next interview.
Really like that you mentioned "physical" products. Many people in the industry only think about "digital" products as soon as they hear about products.
Thank you Saurav Rastogi! Yeah, we are really obsessed with products in general. Of course that includes physical products as well. What's your favourite "physical" product right now?
@@AJSmart There are so many physical products I like (especially Apple🍎 products), but if you talk right now I recently used this mechanical keyboard from coolermaster, It is really amazing. The feedback it gives as soon as you press its keys with the ambient lighting in the back makes is beautiful as well.
@@calebhammel5439 good point, you can get inspiration and steal from everything. Must be a great university :D Did you got the chance to use the advice in a project?
I don't know how many times I came back to watch this video to remind myself it's okay to be obsessed about things that don't align with everyone else. but, as long as you care and look for ways to improve them. There is YOU to relate. Cheer bro!
I'm just starting as a UX designer and I feel like this channel is going to help me grow as a designer ! So glad I found this. I love this question and how it reveals a passion for products. My favorite product would be my daily planner. Every time I bring it out, write in important details and schedules, I feel 100% more productive and responsible. My planner may be improved by adding a digital connection- maybe QR codes that open an app version of the same planner format.
I've been loving notion since quarantine. I love how powerful it is without sacrificing good usability. I use it to track my books, log my ux projects, schedules, websites i want to read later. It's 4 apps rolled into one. My one complaint would be the lack of tutorials and on boarding. I relied on TH-cam and reddit to get notion to work to my liking. They have pre-made templates you can copy, but I'm sure a lot of people love customizing their pages which is why they're using notion in the first place. So rather than relying on third parties I'd like to see more guides within the app.
You are the first person I see who thinks just the way I do. Over 12 years creating websites, apps, and UX here and you have expressed in a few words what my passion is! Subscribed earlier on another one of your videos.
NOW THIS IS HOW A HELPFUL VIDEO SHOULD BE!! NO BEATING AROUND THE BUSH OR TELLS YOU LONG BORING PREAMBLE STORIES. HE GOES STRAIGHT INTO IT WITHOUT DELAY! Subscribed!!
It's actually Notion and in terms of UX, I love it so much that I was clueless. Though, I think their onboarding experience could be more hands-on because some features are quite invisible. To make it more general, having that low learning curve doesn't make tutorials obsolete. Yes, they employ many TH-camrs to spread the word and share their cases, but it's a bit of a distance from a product.
Thanks for sharing Yuri Radavchuk! We use Notion ourselves and that is one of our favourite digital products as well. You are spot on, there are some features that could be more visible. Those are great suggestions to make it better.
Love Notion. I think they should heavier on the templates and widgets too. I think if they expanded those out they could really take on the likes of Monday.com, Basecamp and Jira for really small teams or sub teams as switching between different softwares is a nightmare. For example, having a good roadmap feature for Notion would make me ditch another tool straight away.
I comment to save. As an UX researcher and Product Owner myself I just use Notion for my small project team. And you really made a spot on point about some good tiny features of Notion being buried or nested inside something not easily visible, which makes some even just very simple task hard/confusing to perform. An instance off the top of my head is: I once tried to put all Tasks/Tickets related to one Epic belong to that Epic, however it took me a lot of time to play around to try to find the way to do such a simple mission. Even my sup, who is already more experienced since he's been using Notion for quite a while way before me, could not instantly figure out how to do it. Does anybody here maybe know how to do it?
I was thinking about Notion too, and they really need to improve their app. The desktop version is really easy to use, with some hidden gems that make the learning curve a bit long, but their app is almost impossible to use when you are writing numbers on a spreadsheet and it goes on and on.
My favourite product is the contactless payment. This is one of the best experience ever. The improvement I would see in it is the immediate control of the process with a notification DURING the payement, so it is even more secure.
I really love Crash Course as an interface on TH-cam. I really love how humorous and dramatic the instructors are and i love the use of motion graphics. They're very warm, innovative in terms of content as well since they combine theory with practical examples which really leaves a mark on viewers. I'm currently in the BSW stream in Nepal but I'm extremely passionate about research. I really love the idea of user research cause it would help me connect with so many people from different walks of life while doing sth I love. Plus. I already have experience with conducting interviews and surveys too. Im so happy I came across UX. It's the perfect blend of creativity and research. I love it and I'm hoping to build a career around it.
I think by asking questions like these, that put people on the spot and trips them up, employers can hurt themselves because they'll be tempted to hire the "salesy" designer that has a good reply prepared, not the most capable one. Most people can't name 1 product right away and a good answer needs to be thought through because it's obvious that the "Why?" question is next. A better question would be to ask the designer to look at a product and describe their first impressions/experience. They'll definitely see stuff they don't like and you can ask them how they'd fix it or why they think the company decided to design something that feels broken to them.
thinking of it, yea It takes me some time to think of a favorite or a product I appreciate. But yea I've seen people who had prepared a fake answer to this question and answered to get a job
I think both types of questions are good. XD First impression can be different than when we use and know the product more, so, both types can be useful. And some preparation is always good, but not to the point that we memorize things. So I'm with you on that. I think the employers know how geeky someone is by hearing the answers to all questions and not just these two mentioned in the video (and of course the applicant's previous works show how detailed and capable they are). What he meant in this video was that he wants the person to be crazy XD about products, and we've all got some favorite ones that we use every day and it's normal to think of the good and the bad of each as designers ;) so it shouldn't be that hard to think of one on the spot.
I agree that a lot of the stuff companies put you through in interviews are BS, but honestly if you are a product designer and you can’t answer that question for 20 minutes you shouldn’t be a product designer.
I also love TH-cam. I'm on it everyday, all day. I'd improve TH-cam by creating category hubs, make it easier to search and locate videos that reflect my interests.
my favourite product is scan and go app, shopping is fundamental in every one life. It have improve shopping experience for customer and also in other perspective understanding store need to make their life easy. In same ways going up in hierarchy and understand organisation need to run business smoothly.
My all-time favourite product is Airbnb's mobile app. They've adopted the minimalistic design approach in such a beautiful and efficient way that they're always able to serve their user very well.
Hi there, John and all of you team, this is my first comment on your channel. I really want to thank you, for the priceless content, you are making guys, pure gold. Regardless of the product that I like the most right now, it's Figma. I like almost everything about it: 1. Interface - super intuitive 2. Cross-platform - handy 3. Even the pricing plans are well thought The only things that would make it perfect are: 1. DARK THEME - cause my eyes are bleeding now and then, 2021 is on the doorstep c'mon Figma you can make it, 2. SEARCH - in the layers panel will be pretty helpful. Thanks again and have a great life. Peace
I'm so glad you mentioned physical products. I'm not a UX designer, but I am a back end engineer who gets sucked into full stack roles. And I'm interviewing right now. I wouldn't be able to tell you what my favorite digital product is... I guess Discord? But if I can talk about my motorcycle, I can tell you 30 different things I either wish the manufacturer would improve or I have already improved myself. If I can talk about the keyboard I've been using for 10 years, I could probably tell you a few things I'd improve. If I can talk about the desk I've been using for 10 years or the boots I've been wearing for 6 years, I could tell you a number of things I'd improve on each. I don't know if an interviewer wants to hear about my motorcycle (I imagine they're expecting a digital product or something more relatable like a coffee maker or laptop) but this is a great perspective you've imparted on me.
Wow this is the first time a TH-cam channel ad wasn’t useless. Great video, subscribed! Favourite product? Sketch! What needs to be improved? More advanced protoping, like drag events, animations, etc and make sharing projects easier like Figma. I don’t like Figma because it lacks some of the small details that make Sketch so great like the lightweight feeling of moving and zooming. I could go on for hours about Sketch 😂
My favorite product right now is Figma, because I'm doing a more deeper dive into it and finding a bunch of cool features. But in general my favorite product is Spotify. It's what I use for more than half of my day and I love using it. One thing I would change about it is that since podcasts are getting bigger and bigger each day, the way Spotify organizes them in between the music on the home page really makes it difficult to find the playlists that I want to access or the podcast episodes I want to find. So the first thing I would do is divide the Home page into 2 sections, Music and Podcasts, so that I can go straight to the content that I'm looking for. I honestly don't know how Spotify haven't done this already, since they actually have done it but in the Library section.
Fresh cut flowers is my favorite product right now. It is winter, dark and gloomy, and fresh flowers gives some life, color and spirit to the work home office. I would love for the white tulips on my desk right now to slowly change color from white to dark red as they slowly decline.
Banana - degradable packaging, healthy content, affordability, single handed interaction. Improvements: modify the skin to make it more solid for on the go. Welcome to my garden (the Couchsurfing for private garden camping) - great idea, easy peasy navigation. Improvements? Listings are not connected to messages. After sending e.g. 5 requests it gets confusing to find find the location on the map again. You need to memorize the name, go back to the map and click your way through it. Also, there is not a reputation layer yet, which drove the success of couchsurfing (reciprocation etc., having a good review to lose)
Is it weird to say a design tool is my current favorite product? I love how intuitive Figma is, but the lack of a native spell checker that can be applied across multiple layers is a big inconvenience. The spelling plugins I've found only apply to one layer at a time, which is a problem once you've designed a whole brochure!
Thanks Jonathan M! Figma is a great product, but you're right, the lack of a native spell checker is a big inconvenience. That's a great suggestion for improvement.
I definitely feel this sentiment too! Figma has grown on me to be an immensely powerful and light tool. Yet it doesn’t beat a Microsoft spell check or document processor right now. Those little changes could make it more satisfying and helpful
I like the intuition of Figma too. However, there are still quite some limitations in designing prototype. Some examples off the top of my head: - how to mimic the action: user can select a paragraph by pressing and dragging the mouse, then the selected paragraph turns into being marked in grey or blue? We need this for our User Testing, and I managed to tweak. However, is there an optimal way of mimicking this action? - how to mimic the typing action, i.e user can actually type something and then the next wireframe will appear with the text term that they just typed? Wix- a also great tool that I used can do this, however what about with Figma?
Not at all, I nerd out big time on Adobe XD. I am completely self taught in the program, and every time I discover something new or an update comes in, I'm like "oh, that's so cool!". I'm just patiently waiting for that dark mode!
My favorite app is Google Photos! Why!? Simple - easy to use, minimize & maximize group of photos, easy organization. Improvement - dark mode, other than that I think the app is perfect - it just improves overtime with ML
Such a great video! My favorite app (and will probably always be one of my favorites) is a Swedish app called Swish. It is a mobile realtime payment app that cooperates with all of the major banks in Sweden and it allows you to transfer any amount of money to anyone by using their Swedish phone number and identifying yourself with an electronic identification. The interface is so easy to navigate and visually pleasing. One thing I wanted to improve with the app is to be able to send a payment reminder to someone who owes you money but Swish added that function quite recently haha. Im sure there are a few versions like Swish for different countries.
This video made me realize that I'm on the right path with pursuing UI/UX. I have always naturally been interested in products. I can nerd out and see improvements on the most random websites & apps. I kind of thought every UI/UX designer was like that
[I actually paused on 1:29 ] I like books =) Especially I like to combine reading of a physical book and listening to it when on the go. The best "reading" experience I had was, when I had 3 representations of the same book: a physical book, which I would read, e.g. before bed; an audio version of the book which I would listen to on my way to work; and a digital version, when I've completed reading and wanted to come back to a specific place in the book using "search". I would improve books as a product by offering a 3 in 1 package to the client at a reasonable price (it is very frustrating when I have to pay 3 times for the same content).
I LOVE that notebook. Thanks for encouraging geeking out over products - sometimes people can perceive that as being materialistic but when you're designing products to help make peoples' lives better, it's okay and even great to appreciate products!
Frankly, I can only think of 3 options that blow my mind : -The Switch, it needs better handles and a stronger library of games from Nintendo's History... -Figma, more build-in features (templates for personas, items to do a user-flow, zoning icons, pre-animated buttons, etc.) -Aer bags, I don't see how to improve them to be fair, they are incredible products
I started to walk a lot and one of my favorite products right now are the running sneakers. Not going to name a brand, because we tend to be subjective. However, regardless of the brand, I think these sneakers can be improved. Here are a few ideas: - If you walk/run a lot, you need more durability for regular wear and tear. Also, sneakers need to be a bit more resistant to washing. - I would make a running sneaker with smart functions: *calorie counter *steps counter *app that guides you to improve/optimize your walking/running - Use 3D scanning for creating custom shoes for each individual. Scanners should be placed in each store for measuring. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but it would be so cool to have a pair of sneakers that fit PERFECT :) - Improve the lacing system. Create a hybrid between slip-on and lacing. Technically, a slip-on system that you can adjust.
Just wanted to thank you so much for this video. I’m currently a Web Developer however always had more of a design background and I am self learning UX design to find my dream job. This video has blown me away! I have always had an obsession with products I’ve owned, since I was a kid. I could talk all day about every iPhone generation and each design. I always thought having this kind of obsession just made me a little nerdier than I’d like to admit, but this video made me realise it’s a gift! I’m feeling so much more confident now that I am on the right path. My favourite product currently is my iPhone 12 Pro. The design is what sold me on it, it reminds me of the iPhone 5S, my first and favourite iPhone, and what I think is the most iconic phone design ever. One thing I would improve: the stainless steel sides!!! This has bothered me ever since I got the phone every time I hold it in my hand there are smudges and fingerprints all over the frame. Totally takes away from the beauty of the design!
Thanks for the feedback, happy you enjoyed the video and that it made you feel more confident! Btw we also love the new iphone design and don't love the smudges!
I love spotify, it's not full of splashes of their logo while they are focused on the simplicity of navigating from one page to another, the algorithm is very intentional.
Fav product is the Apple pencil 1, what i love to improve abt it is one thing, i will make the cap and the body connected via some attachment so that we do not loose it while charging it
My favourite product would be headspace. I absolutely love their icons and the whole app makes you feel relaxed. Also there's thing called 'the wake up' in headspace which gives a headstart to my day! What I don't like about the app is the buddies section. I think it can be more engaging and maybe 1-1 mediation could bring something new. I'd love to see guided yoga too on the app.
Favorite product - The Razer Raion controller for PS4, it is a specialty 6 button controller for fighting games. It has excellent responsiveness, build quality, and ergonomics. I would change the d pad, which only needs a slight tweak (a pivot in the middle, a bit hard to explain). I've asked this question to potential bosses at my previous job, and its crazy how many candidates get stumped on that question.
I absolutely love the ROLI Seaboard, it's a digital piano on a rubbery board that has squishy extrusions where the keys would be, what's incredible about it is that depending on where your fingers are vertically on the keys and how hard you're pressing down you can alter the sounds in crazy ways (pitch, growl, strain, etc). You can also change what instruments you're playing and their characteristics based on what movements you make. It takes music and turns it into a multi-dimensional, hands-on experience and it gives me goose-bumps thinking about it. I'd improve the Seaboard by adding a small bump (similar to the ones on the F and J on a keyboard) on the top of each key to help pianists discreetly feel where their fingers are in vertical relation to the board. Since this is such a foreign type of interaction for pianists, it would be good to have some kind of discreet physical marker.
The TH-cam app is pretty awesome! Thank you so much for moving the comment section above the recommending videos. And when I’m receiving a text or email my video is still playing all while multitasking 🙌🏾 Also Turbo Tax Ux design has evolved from stressful to Impeccable! I did my taxes this year and I didn’t scream or swear not once🤗 it was intuitive, seamless, and consisted concise language and examples.
Three things: 1. Thanks for another grrrrrreat video! 2. My educational and career background is really far from UX, however, 6 months ago I googled "what's the difference between UI and UX" out of pure curiosity, and since that time UX topic became my obsession. I can talk about UX/UI for hours. This obsession helped me realize my true passion and now I'm working on changing my career path to eventually become a UX designer. So, I really liked how you mentioned that "obsession" thing cause I know what you mean! :D 3. After watching your video about Oak app I decided to check it out. Guess what, now it's my must-use-at-least-once-a-day app. Love it! It's simple, pleasing to an eye and extremely useful. What I would change about it: I use it on iPad and it seems like it's not well adapted for a tablet - there are empty spaces and it creates some kind of disharmony. Also, I'd improve/add gestures - out of habit I swipe to the right to go back to the menu but the app doesn't react. That's all so far :) Thanks once again, can't wait for new videos and newsletters!
Thanks for sharing Aimira D.! Nice to hear that you use the Oak app and even nicer to hear that you've found this new "obsession". Best of luck in this new career path. Let us know how it goes.
Phillips hue + whatever voice assistant you use. The first one could be done by either HUE or the voice assistant, room ownership. Ex.: Bedroom 1 belongs to me, Bedroom 2 belongs to my sister. If I say "turn my bedroom lights off" to my iPhone i would recognise that both are mine and only turn off the correct lights. This is applicable to many home automation products, but Hue is my favorite...
I really enjoy Asana right now! It's interface is very organized. I also like that they have various options to view your tasks (ex: list, timeline, calendar). It also has a functional home tab where you can see all of your projects. I think it could improve by sorting projects in a binder style format or having a tab for projects so that you can easily access them. It took me a little bit to figure out where I could find the project that I made.
I love the part where you’ve mentioned everything is a product. I mean that’s me I see every small product minutely like my planner how it is decorated and has small sticky notes and how I can improve the design... So I want say about a product name Jira, it’s platform for agile workflow. I like the design and it’s some features for example drag drop or the tickets but my colleague always complain about how complex it is. When the backend developers have to deal with that software they didn’t like it. So I whenever I use it I always think how can it be better
Thanks for sharing your favourite product Amisha Gadhia! Sounds like a great tool. And you're spot on, everything is a product and you should look at things that way if you want to cultivate your passion for products.
I've been enjoying and have reached relative success with the Peak saving app. The overall platform is simple and sleek with cool animated 'peak' icons. One feature I'd like to see added is a budget option to help the user responsibly save without negatively draining their bank account with automatic saves.
I love Miro. Desktop is extraordinary. I love the templates and ability to make my own templates Ave they are really accessible. But I do scratch my head when using mobile. I still haven't figured out how to make a new slide 😂. But the camera, making photos of post-its and with ocr it being uploaded as editable text is really cool.
Finally a question that made me stop and think. Also felt a bit bad I didn't think about it before, but you've nailed it in the head! In my own case I don't have products that I love per-se, but I could easily bring up some that I can't live without and would certainly nerd out on a ton of details
For me it is AirBnB. Their focus for iteration to cater for their customers and provide a refreshing experience every time is fascinating to me. I love the conversation on geeking about the little things. The only thing I would add to their unique design collaborative signature is improving the onboarding experience for new users. As a junior designer job hunting, I keep getting the response on my experience when I apply for mid-level roles. I love this video.
I turned more towards twitter recently. It is great to get in contact with people or companies or just reach out for support. It is less formal and more in the now. You can easily find and join conversations of your interest, or kick one-off by yourself. Just recently I got my first professional coffee invite with a product designer I got to know over Twitter. I hope we can drink one too sometime or eat a Schawarma (What's your favorite btw? I'm still new here). To answer the question of what to improve, I'd like to explore how providing more options to personalize the "Feed" and/or "Trends", would affect the ecosystem of the twitter community, which relies on the openness to get something trending and visible to all users. For example like the "Bell" to mark other accounts you are more interested in, but I still feel the feed is more dominated by the algorithm behind it that may favor those sources that have the most followers and interactions with their tweets over what a user really chooses to be relevant.
I do think about things around that can be build or design differently or have additional feature, but for recruiters more important is the lack of experience with devs...
My favorite product right now: yoga blocks. How could I make it better: add some grips or textures to easy attach them together to build new functionalities
I love the google pixel phone but on the new version they took the squeeze feature off, so now to google something I have to talk to it or actually unlock the phone, and press the search button icon. It is a discreet feature that gives speed when googling something.
My current favorite product is the "Duolingo Mobile App". Just a few months back I was introduced to this app and man what a joy and motivation it brings in me to learn a language? All you need is a tiny bit of interest in you to learn a language and Duolingo takes care of the rest. The way they designed their language courses, the leaderboards, the daily streak, and the notification, everything has an impact on the overall user experience. There are many ways to make the app better, the gamification of learning a language has been pretty good but we need to look at data to understand what makes a user go inactive after fixing a daily learning goal, a little bit of qualitative and quantitative research for those personas might help understand the problem and improve the product/app from there. Okay, now am gonna continue watching the video.
My cocktail shaker set. I love it because it allows me to entertain myself and my guests, it makes me look like I know what 'm doing. And I get to explore new recipes and try them with friends. For me a personal improvement would be to have a transparent shaker so I can show off even more. Yes the job to be done is rather emotional :p. But to make it better as a product, I would go out in the field and talk to some bartenders. And enjoy the fruits of their labour as I go about ;).
Yes, until now everybody is talking about a digital product but (call me crazy) I want to talk about the greatest product from all the times (my opinion-maybe because is my passion:)) - the bicycle. More than 200 years the same shape, same concept, same, same almost everything. The new times just came with new materials, some different geometry but the product to be easy to use and functional just remained the same. I think is a super great challenge for designers and engineers to reinvent or redesign the bicycle (I'm still thinking:)) )
I am a Salesforce team manager, but I believe that a good Salesforce Admin has to have basic knowledge/feeling for UX. I follow you guys and love your video! Interestingly enough this year for Intern position and for FT position I included these 2 questions in my screening interview (for the same reasons you described). They tell me so much about the person's feel and passion for UX. Thank you for all you do! Keep it up! Love your content! 🌟♥️👍😎
Thanks for the comment Alesia Dvorkina! You are spot on! Those questions reveal your passion for UX and products right away. Nice to hear that you've included those questions in your screening.
Forest, an app that helps you focus. I love it because it is actually a simple Pomodoro-based productivity software where you set a timer for 30-100 minutes, and at the end you plant a tree in a virtual garden. If you give it the right permissions, it will gently send you back to Forest if you open ant other app (a total must for a Reddit addict like me). But despite it's simple functional aspect, the fact that you plant trees and that the whole atmosphere of the app is built around this concept, makes it FEEL very different. It is the power of branding/visual design personified. But if you take the paid version the app goes a step further: It lets you plant actual real trees in the world through a nonprofit programme they have set up! This also connects the app to an actual purpose that fits its theme. The thought, care and design appeal together truly makes it a jewel among the apps.
I'm obsessed with how we design societies, stories, and the future. I really want to figure out how to turn those obsessions into value, which I try to do on my own channel, but it's difficult!
For me it has to be the Tide freelancer banking app, not only is the UX great but their product strategy is brilliant! If you're a Sole Trader in the UK it has everything you need to file your expenses correctly with receipts, and it's actually your bank, not just an accountancy app! They've thought of everything their target market would need with great features that allow you to set up a Limited Company as well. Definitely impressed. I'd improve it by making the Xero integration better, attached receipts and photos could pull straight into Xero as bills. Currently, if your accountant requires you to use Xero then you might as well not have all the awesome features Tide offers as they don't integrate
My favourite product is iPhone 11. It does not have bezel, uses 3D face recognition which makes unlocking of phone seamless. However it is quite big and heavy to handle. Personally I would make it foldable just like Samsung Galaxy Fold. It makes the phone more compact and interaction with the phone more interesting.
My favorite Product right now that I use is the OnePlus Wireless Z Earphones. No, not because they sound good. But they're SUPER convenient. They support fast charging and have a hugee battery backup. They sit on my neck the whole day and I don't need to worry about them getting lost or fall from my ears. The BEST part is the Quick Switch button. I just need to double tap and the earphone will switch to my last used device. Easy to switch between my computer and phone. The thing I'd improve is the same - the quick Switch button only works with last 2 devices. If 2nd device is off, it won't try for 3rd. For example my TV.
Hey AJ&Smart, thanks for sharing this! My favorite product right now is the Apple Pencil. I mostly use it for digital note taking at university on my iPad Pro and it has been an absolute game changer!🙏🏼 I like the idea that it‘s a physical product which not only helps me interacting with digital interfaces but also with creating digital content. I can now be as perfectionistic and flexible as I want to be because it allows me to replace or remove everything I want to change. It also really solved my problem of carrying all my notes and printed slides with me. Now I just need to have my iPad with me and still have permanent access everywhere. However I think Apple was too focused on the design with the first Generation of the Apple Pencil as it is not ergonomically shaped at all and quite heavy. The charging at the lightning port is also a bit annoying. The second generation is lighter, supports wirless charging is gesture sensitive and is much better to hold. So Apple did quite a good job in improving this great product. It‘s just a pity that I can‘t switch without buying the latest iPad aswell 🥴😂
Hiii! Team aj and smart let me answer to your first question what's my favourite product. My favorite digital product is urban company. This is a company where you can found your daily basic needs like massage therapy, salon service, AC repairers, Electriction, Plumbers, and many many more other service like this at your door step! And now let me come to your another question is how can you improve it? I can improve it by adding more features and more services like your car mechanic services, and a helping hands services. Which could be very useful while you shift your home for one place to another. And at last good work team aj and smart these kind of tips keeps motivates our ux slack community. Thankyou so much😂❤️❤️❤️😍
The current product that I favor at the moment is One UI on Android. From everything with the complexity of how you can navigate to apps, to the smoothness from transitioning between apps. However, that's also what I would like to improve upon, I want to make the UI more simple. What has always set Android apart from Apple in UI is the simplicity that IOS provides. That is what I firmly believe iPhone has and what makes it more popular than Android phones. Simple features such as "Dynamic Island" satisfy the user's need by implementing quick features that create a less difficult way to use a UI.
I'm doing a marathon of all your videos! Really inspiring. My favourite product is Adobe Creative Cloud, I recently discovered all the apps (in addition to the best known as Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, After Effects, Adobe XD) and it's awesome. I'm challenging myself to learn how to use all of them.
My current favorite product is axxor(apex) helmets, those are very comfortable, safe and very cool and premium looking helmets that in just 5000 rupees or only 60$ to 70$ and they are certified with DOT and ECE. This product is very good for beginner biker and all kind of bikers who looking for good helmet in budget. and improvement i wanna see in this product is giving good quality helmet anti-fog visors i know it will increase the price but its worth to pay extra bucks. Iam sure that improvement will change the thinking about budget level helmets and their product quality issues in bikers mind.
Watching this video after being laid-off, and half-way through I am instantly put off. The whole problem with the tech industry is that your job MUST be you hobby as well. This does not happen in almost any other profession or job-space. So why is it a mandatory requirement here?! Do you think doctors are asked if they are obsessed with operating on people? Or if they do free medical checkup case studies in the weekend as a hobby? Or what was their favourite check-up they ever did, and why? It's absurd. You can be passionate and love UX Design/ Programming/ Engineering without making it your whole personality. It's absurd if somebody asks me what I do in my free time, and I say go on hikes or read romance novels, it's an instant turn off because my whole life doesn't revolve around my profession. You can be extremely good at your job whilst only doing it as a job. You don't need to be obsessed with products/ apps/ software in order to be a good designer, as long as you perform your job extremely well. Your work should speak for itself without having to justify your career by being obsessed with it.
What gives me great pleasure is when I buy a product and then end up using it a lot more than initially expected due the the great UX of it. It gives me a feeling that I got good value out of it. For example I invested in an expensive Dyson Vacuum cleaner. I was hesitant spending that much money. Because, who likes to vacuum? Where I would maybe vacuum once a week because it was so burdensome, I now just grab the Dyson every day, quick manoeuvre it around the kitchen and dining area after dinner before putting it back in its convenient charging station. Making me wonder, how did I ever lived without this thing. That shows great UX to me. The UX is in fact so good, that I almost enjoy vacuum cleaning. Those are great questions for an interview. Because the answer does not matter, its how they got to that answer. Great tip!
wow! This was so helpful!! I didn't realize how deeply obsessed I am with my nerdy pencil case with all my favorite collection of pens too! (highlighters included)
My favourite product is Webflow❤. I love how they teach (Webflow University and their hilarious marketing), which not only encourages their audience to learn more and more about how to use their product well but also gives a great personality to their brand. How would I improve it? By cleaning their interface up a bit. I know webflow does great stuff, but the interface can be simplified a lot.
physically i like my laptop and mouse and the pad it have. What i want to improve is the lighting the speaker placement, the screen jiggling, and also that i would like it to have a simple stand extending from its base, for mouse i would like it to have some wrist supporting stuff, and also that the touch pad should be moveable or you might say that when i use keyboard of my laptop i place my palms at the sides of touchpad but this causes the pressing which is not sensible, also that i would like he lights to be more bright and control to them, for screen i would like it to have some soft sides and a big size of screen as well , i still love my laptop.
This is a tough one.. for digital projects I am loving Lightroom CC right now because of its cloud syncing capabilities. I would improve it to allow base members with more storage options and the ability to freely access and sync digital file assets from its older Lightroom predecessor. Also I’d add a way for it to show brush masks easily. For physical products, I’m starting to like my new grow light bc it’s a functional tool. I really dislike the clamp clip it comes with since it is heavy and difficult to open and support the lamp. I’d like to design a base that can be clamped but also sits squarely on a surface while balancing the gooseneck lamp bases!
Good video. If you haven't taken apart & modified most products you have purchased, or never met an interface you couldn't improve, you're not ready for top-shelf UX work.
I like Mural. It's a really good collaboration tool. I would improve the PDF exports. Some exports are truncated. To improve it: Before exporting a board to PDF, I would already prompt the user that the export might be truncated due to the size of the board. So as a user, I don't have to wait for the PDF link sent to my email, just to find out it's truncated. Also, upon exporting multiple PDFs, I would receive multiple emails with PDFs without titles. I would love to know which ones are which.
Great video! I am wondering when answering the "what would you do to improve the product" question, can we go directly into improving some of the detailed interactions and designs? Or do we answer it from a higher-level (which I'm not sure how to)
I really like spotify. it caters to all listening needs. I get Tedx, podcasts. I love the standard playlists it has. Makes listening interesting. it gives basic videos and background to the song playing
Digital- Amazon the UI is cluttered and like others though my cart is full of wish list items. I wish there was a way to categorize them either by item type or immediacy of need. Physical- cast iron pan, I wish there was a way to make them less heavy.
What is your favourite product right now? and how would you make it better? Let us know in the comments below! 👇
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Spotify! The ability to listen to similar music but not have to build playlists is a game changer for me. I never got into iTunes for that reason, and Pandora would get hyper specific to one song I liked and then the "station" was too granular. I love the Spotify service but I would strip so much functionality from it. Less is more... "faves", "add to queue", "add to playlist", "follow a user", differing functionality and experiences between podcast episodes vs songs. Drives me batty but I love the value of the app! I would standardize how you interact with episodes and songs. Analytics permitting, I would remove the social aspect of seeing what people listen to completely. Too much screen real estate dedicated to the social piece and I don't care what people are listening to. My hypothesis is that people's music preferences are so hyper specific that they don't care about other listeners. They display everything by album like it's still 1990, I want to listen to the hits, if it's good enough I might view the album. Ok...I'm realizing I should redesign this for fun....
I’ve been working as a UX/UI Designer (aka Product Designer) in Silicon Valley for almost 12 years. I only got the questions you said in your video that are key in a job interview ONE time, from Facebook. So, if you’re reading this comment, here’s what I learned to be successful in a job interview. Relax, be yourself, don’t be afraid to fail at getting the job, or to say something that later you’re going to regret because it was wrong, don’t let fear cloud your mind, get a good rest and answer questions the best you can, balancing your answers between what the hiring manager or interviewer want to hear, and what you actually know and believe to be a good answer. Don’t try to be too friendly, too serious, and don’t be arrogant, just aim at having a good conversation where you are confident in your skills and knowledge. Personality matters. Always willing to listen and learn. If you don’t move to the next round is fine, up to the next interview.
Thanks my guy. Your comment needs more attention.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for this. I’m gonna screen shot this and save this to my phone lol. Cause I NEED SOME ONE TELL ME THIS!
Thank you. Good luck
Really like that you mentioned "physical" products. Many people in the industry only think about "digital" products as soon as they hear about products.
Thank you Saurav Rastogi! Yeah, we are really obsessed with products in general. Of course that includes physical products as well. What's your favourite "physical" product right now?
@@AJSmart There are so many physical products I like (especially Apple🍎 products), but if you talk right now I recently used this mechanical keyboard from coolermaster, It is really amazing. The feedback it gives as soon as you press its keys with the ambient lighting in the back makes is beautiful as well.
I'm a UX Design graduate student and the faculty always reminds us to not only think digitally.
@@calebhammel5439 good point, you can get inspiration and steal from everything. Must be a great university :D Did you got the chance to use the advice in a project?
Got asked by Google how I could make the pixel better. Told them that they can’t make it better. They do the basics so well. Got the job
I don't know how many times I came back to watch this video to remind myself it's okay to be obsessed about things that don't align with everyone else. but, as long as you care and look for ways to improve them. There is YOU to relate. Cheer bro!
I'm just starting as a UX designer and I feel like this channel is going to help me grow as a designer ! So glad I found this.
I love this question and how it reveals a passion for products.
My favorite product would be my daily planner. Every time I bring it out, write in important details and schedules, I feel 100% more productive and responsible. My planner may be improved by adding a digital connection- maybe QR codes that open an app version of the same planner format.
I've been loving notion since quarantine. I love how powerful it is without sacrificing good usability. I use it to track my books, log my ux projects, schedules, websites i want to read later. It's 4 apps rolled into one.
My one complaint would be the lack of tutorials and on boarding. I relied on TH-cam and reddit to get notion to work to my liking. They have pre-made templates you can copy, but I'm sure a lot of people love customizing their pages which is why they're using notion in the first place. So rather than relying on third parties I'd like to see more guides within the app.
Thanks Elizabeth! We use Notion ourselves and find it very helpful as well. That's a great suggestion for an improvement.
Yeah, Notion can help me create better note & archieve alot of things :D
You are the first person I see who thinks just the way I do.
Over 12 years creating websites, apps, and UX here and you have expressed in a few words what my passion is!
Subscribed earlier on another one of your videos.
That is awesome! Thanks, Yves!
NOW THIS IS HOW A HELPFUL VIDEO SHOULD BE!! NO BEATING AROUND THE BUSH OR TELLS YOU LONG BORING PREAMBLE STORIES. HE GOES STRAIGHT INTO IT WITHOUT DELAY!
Subscribed!!
Thanks for the comment and the sub Visual Chamber!
Totally agree. I loved that it was straight to the point. Really appreciate the videos, @AJ&Smart
Holy crap, this video just proved to me that I'm on the right path in being a UX Designer!
It's actually Notion and in terms of UX, I love it so much that I was clueless. Though, I think their onboarding experience could be more hands-on because some features are quite invisible. To make it more general, having that low learning curve doesn't make tutorials obsolete. Yes, they employ many TH-camrs to spread the word and share their cases, but it's a bit of a distance from a product.
Thanks for sharing Yuri Radavchuk! We use Notion ourselves and that is one of our favourite digital products as well. You are spot on, there are some features that could be more visible. Those are great suggestions to make it better.
Love Notion. I think they should heavier on the templates
and widgets too. I think if they expanded those out they could really take on the likes of Monday.com, Basecamp and Jira for really small teams or sub teams as switching between different softwares is a nightmare. For example, having a good roadmap feature for Notion would make me ditch another tool straight away.
I comment to save. As an UX researcher and Product Owner myself I just use Notion for my small project team. And you really made a spot on point about some good tiny features of Notion being buried or nested inside something not easily visible, which makes some even just very simple task hard/confusing to perform. An instance off the top of my head is: I once tried to put all Tasks/Tickets related to one Epic belong to that Epic, however it took me a lot of time to play around to try to find the way to do such a simple mission. Even my sup, who is already more experienced since he's been using Notion for quite a while way before me, could not instantly figure out how to do it. Does anybody here maybe know how to do it?
I was thinking about Notion too, and they really need to improve their app. The desktop version is really easy to use, with some hidden gems that make the learning curve a bit long, but their app is almost impossible to use when you are writing numbers on a spreadsheet and it goes on and on.
My favourite product is the contactless payment. This is one of the best experience ever. The improvement I would see in it is the immediate control of the process with a notification DURING the payement, so it is even more secure.
I really love Crash Course as an interface on TH-cam. I really love how humorous and dramatic the instructors are and i love the use of motion graphics. They're very warm, innovative in terms of content as well since they combine theory with practical examples which really leaves a mark on viewers.
I'm currently in the BSW stream in Nepal but I'm extremely passionate about research. I really love the idea of user research cause it would help me connect with so many people from different walks of life while doing sth I love. Plus. I already have experience with conducting interviews and surveys too.
Im so happy I came across UX. It's the perfect blend of creativity and research. I love it and I'm hoping to build a career around it.
Thanks for sharing! Crash Course's product is very entertaining, educational and humorous indeed. Nice to hear that you're loving UX! Best of luck.
I think by asking questions like these, that put people on the spot and trips them up, employers can hurt themselves because they'll be tempted to hire the "salesy" designer that has a good reply prepared, not the most capable one. Most people can't name 1 product right away and a good answer needs to be thought through because it's obvious that the "Why?" question is next. A better question would be to ask the designer to look at a product and describe their first impressions/experience. They'll definitely see stuff they don't like and you can ask them how they'd fix it or why they think the company decided to design something that feels broken to them.
thinking of it, yea It takes me some time to think of a favorite or a product I appreciate. But yea I've seen people who had prepared a fake answer to this question and answered to get a job
I think both types of questions are good. XD First impression can be different than when we use and know the product more, so, both types can be useful. And some preparation is always good, but not to the point that we memorize things. So I'm with you on that.
I think the employers know how geeky someone is by hearing the answers to all questions and not just these two mentioned in the video (and of course the applicant's previous works show how detailed and capable they are). What he meant in this video was that he wants the person to be crazy XD about products, and we've all got some favorite ones that we use every day and it's normal to think of the good and the bad of each as designers ;) so it shouldn't be that hard to think of one on the spot.
I agree that a lot of the stuff companies put you through in interviews are BS, but honestly if you are a product designer and you can’t answer that question for 20 minutes you shouldn’t be a product designer.
I also love TH-cam. I'm on it everyday, all day. I'd improve TH-cam by creating category hubs, make it easier to search and locate videos that reflect my interests.
my favourite product is scan and go app, shopping is fundamental in every one life. It have improve shopping experience for customer and also in other perspective understanding store need to make their life easy. In same ways going up in hierarchy and understand organisation need to run business smoothly.
My all-time favourite product is Airbnb's mobile app. They've adopted the minimalistic design approach in such a beautiful and efficient way that they're always able to serve their user very well.
Thanks for sharing Pakhi Mangal! The Airbnb mobile app is great.
my favorite product is "Shoes", and I like to improve it by making it waterproof and dustproof.
I am not a shoe designer.
Hi there, John and all of you team, this is my first comment on your channel.
I really want to thank you, for the priceless content, you are making guys, pure gold.
Regardless of the product that I like the most right now, it's Figma.
I like almost everything about it:
1. Interface - super intuitive
2. Cross-platform - handy
3. Even the pricing plans are well thought
The only things that would make it perfect are:
1. DARK THEME - cause my eyes are bleeding now and then, 2021 is on the doorstep c'mon Figma you can make it,
2. SEARCH - in the layers panel will be pretty helpful.
Thanks again and have a great life. Peace
My favourite is headspace because I love that soothing interface and cool animation.
I'm so glad you mentioned physical products. I'm not a UX designer, but I am a back end engineer who gets sucked into full stack roles. And I'm interviewing right now. I wouldn't be able to tell you what my favorite digital product is... I guess Discord? But if I can talk about my motorcycle, I can tell you 30 different things I either wish the manufacturer would improve or I have already improved myself. If I can talk about the keyboard I've been using for 10 years, I could probably tell you a few things I'd improve. If I can talk about the desk I've been using for 10 years or the boots I've been wearing for 6 years, I could tell you a number of things I'd improve on each. I don't know if an interviewer wants to hear about my motorcycle (I imagine they're expecting a digital product or something more relatable like a coffee maker or laptop) but this is a great perspective you've imparted on me.
Wow this is the first time a TH-cam channel ad wasn’t useless. Great video, subscribed! Favourite product? Sketch! What needs to be improved? More advanced protoping, like drag events, animations, etc and make sharing projects easier like Figma. I don’t like Figma because it lacks some of the small details that make Sketch so great like the lightweight feeling of moving and zooming. I could go on for hours about Sketch 😂
My favorite product right now is Figma, because I'm doing a more deeper dive into it and finding a bunch of cool features. But in general my favorite product is Spotify. It's what I use for more than half of my day and I love using it. One thing I would change about it is that since podcasts are getting bigger and bigger each day, the way Spotify organizes them in between the music on the home page really makes it difficult to find the playlists that I want to access or the podcast episodes I want to find. So the first thing I would do is divide the Home page into 2 sections, Music and Podcasts, so that I can go straight to the content that I'm looking for. I honestly don't know how Spotify haven't done this already, since they actually have done it but in the Library section.
Fresh cut flowers is my favorite product right now. It is winter, dark and gloomy, and fresh flowers gives some life, color and spirit to the work home office.
I would love for the white tulips on my desk right now to slowly change color from white to dark red as they slowly decline.
My favorite product is my MacBook. I'd improve them by making them cost less! LOL.
Banana - degradable packaging, healthy content, affordability, single handed interaction. Improvements: modify the skin to make it more solid for on the go.
Welcome to my garden (the Couchsurfing for private garden camping) - great idea, easy peasy navigation. Improvements? Listings are not connected to messages. After sending e.g. 5 requests it gets confusing to find find the location on the map again. You need to memorize the name, go back to the map and click your way through it. Also, there is not a reputation layer yet, which drove the success of couchsurfing (reciprocation etc., having a good review to lose)
I thought just the same product🤜🤛
Is it weird to say a design tool is my current favorite product? I love how intuitive Figma is, but the lack of a native spell checker that can be applied across multiple layers is a big inconvenience. The spelling plugins I've found only apply to one layer at a time, which is a problem once you've designed a whole brochure!
Thanks Jonathan M! Figma is a great product, but you're right, the lack of a native spell checker is a big inconvenience. That's a great suggestion for improvement.
Figma is great and free for peoples. 👍 all time favourite
I definitely feel this sentiment too! Figma has grown on me to be an immensely powerful and light tool. Yet it doesn’t beat a Microsoft spell check or document processor right now. Those little changes could make it more satisfying and helpful
I like the intuition of Figma too. However, there are still quite some limitations in designing prototype. Some examples off the top of my head:
- how to mimic the action: user can select a paragraph by pressing and dragging the mouse, then the selected paragraph turns into being marked in grey or blue? We need this for our User Testing, and I managed to tweak. However, is there an optimal way of mimicking this action?
- how to mimic the typing action, i.e user can actually type something and then the next wireframe will appear with the text term that they just typed? Wix- a also great tool that I used can do this, however what about with Figma?
Not at all, I nerd out big time on Adobe XD. I am completely self taught in the program, and every time I discover something new or an update comes in, I'm like "oh, that's so cool!". I'm just patiently waiting for that dark mode!
My favorite app is Google Photos!
Why!?
Simple - easy to use, minimize & maximize group of photos, easy organization.
Improvement - dark mode, other than that I think the app is perfect - it just improves overtime with ML
Thanks Keysang Yonthan! That's a great answer.
Such a great video! My favorite app (and will probably always be one of my favorites) is a Swedish app called Swish. It is a mobile realtime payment app that cooperates with all of the major banks in Sweden and it allows you to transfer any amount of money to anyone by using their Swedish phone number and identifying yourself with an electronic identification. The interface is so easy to navigate and visually pleasing. One thing I wanted to improve with the app is to be able to send a payment reminder to someone who owes you money but Swish added that function quite recently haha. Im sure there are a few versions like Swish for different countries.
This video made me realize that I'm on the right path with pursuing UI/UX. I have always naturally been interested in products. I can nerd out and see improvements on the most random websites & apps. I kind of thought every UI/UX designer was like that
[I actually paused on 1:29 ]
I like books =) Especially I like to combine reading of a physical book and listening to it when on the go.
The best "reading" experience I had was, when I had 3 representations of the same book:
a physical book, which I would read, e.g. before bed;
an audio version of the book which I would listen to on my way to work;
and a digital version, when I've completed reading and wanted to come back to a specific place in the book using "search".
I would improve books as a product by offering a 3 in 1 package to the client at a reasonable price (it is very frustrating when I have to pay 3 times for the same content).
I LOVE that notebook. Thanks for encouraging geeking out over products - sometimes people can perceive that as being materialistic but when you're designing products to help make peoples' lives better, it's okay and even great to appreciate products!
Thanks for sharing your knowledge. It's awesome!
Glad you liked it!
lemonade - is I like the most.
Very fresh feeling and well understanding they are providing.
Thanks for sharing Shital Xcarbon!
Frankly, I can only think of 3 options that blow my mind :
-The Switch, it needs better handles and a stronger library of games from Nintendo's History...
-Figma, more build-in features (templates for personas, items to do a user-flow, zoning icons, pre-animated buttons, etc.)
-Aer bags, I don't see how to improve them to be fair, they are incredible products
I started to walk a lot and one of my favorite products right now are the running sneakers.
Not going to name a brand, because we tend to be subjective. However, regardless of the brand, I think these sneakers can be improved. Here are a few ideas:
- If you walk/run a lot, you need more durability for regular wear and tear. Also, sneakers need to be a bit more resistant to washing.
- I would make a running sneaker with smart functions:
*calorie counter
*steps counter
*app that guides you to improve/optimize your walking/running
- Use 3D scanning for creating custom shoes for each individual. Scanners should be placed in each store for measuring. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but it would be so cool to have a pair of sneakers that fit PERFECT :)
- Improve the lacing system. Create a hybrid between slip-on and lacing. Technically, a slip-on system that you can adjust.
Always quality after quality after quality. Thanks again!
Ohh great insight! Thanks hopefully this will come in handy for my UX interview what I love about Spotify, and what I would change.
The way you are representing your videos is amazing . You've paid attention to every detail 👌🏻 especially - pause and seriously do it
Thanks for sharing! those questions are critical and helpful! Subscribed!
Just wanted to thank you so much for this video. I’m currently a Web Developer however always had more of a design background and I am self learning UX design to find my dream job.
This video has blown me away! I have always had an obsession with products I’ve owned, since I was a kid. I could talk all day about every iPhone generation and each design. I always thought having this kind of obsession just made me a little nerdier than I’d like to admit, but this video made me realise it’s a gift! I’m feeling so much more confident now that I am on the right path.
My favourite product currently is my iPhone 12 Pro. The design is what sold me on it, it reminds me of the iPhone 5S, my first and favourite iPhone, and what I think is the most iconic phone design ever.
One thing I would improve: the stainless steel sides!!! This has bothered me ever since I got the phone every time I hold it in my hand there are smudges and fingerprints all over the frame. Totally takes away from the beauty of the design!
Thanks for the feedback, happy you enjoyed the video and that it made you feel more confident! Btw we also love the new iphone design and don't love the smudges!
I love spotify, it's not full of splashes of their logo while they are focused on the simplicity of navigating from one page to another, the algorithm is very intentional.
Thank you! Your channel is so helpful!!
Fav product is the Apple pencil 1, what i love to improve abt it is one thing, i will make the cap and the body connected via some attachment so that we do not loose it while charging it
To-do list is one of my favorite product using right now.. just achievements makes it speical
My favourite product would be headspace. I absolutely love their icons and the whole app makes you feel relaxed. Also there's thing called 'the wake up' in headspace which gives a headstart to my day! What I don't like about the app is the buddies section. I think it can be more engaging and maybe 1-1 mediation could bring something new. I'd love to see guided yoga too on the app.
Thanks for sharing Nomit Pahuja! Headspace is a great app.
Favorite product - The Razer Raion controller for PS4, it is a specialty 6 button controller for fighting games. It has excellent responsiveness, build quality, and ergonomics. I would change the d pad, which only needs a slight tweak (a pivot in the middle, a bit hard to explain).
I've asked this question to potential bosses at my previous job, and its crazy how many candidates get stumped on that question.
Thanks for sharing Leonard Rowe! Hope your winning all those fights 🎮
I absolutely love the ROLI Seaboard, it's a digital piano on a rubbery board that has squishy extrusions where the keys would be, what's incredible about it is that depending on where your fingers are vertically on the keys and how hard you're pressing down you can alter the sounds in crazy ways (pitch, growl, strain, etc). You can also change what instruments you're playing and their characteristics based on what movements you make. It takes music and turns it into a multi-dimensional, hands-on experience and it gives me goose-bumps thinking about it.
I'd improve the Seaboard by adding a small bump (similar to the ones on the F and J on a keyboard) on the top of each key to help pianists discreetly feel where their fingers are in vertical relation to the board. Since this is such a foreign type of interaction for pianists, it would be good to have some kind of discreet physical marker.
The TH-cam app is pretty awesome! Thank you so much for moving the comment section above the recommending videos. And when I’m receiving a text or email my video is still playing all while multitasking 🙌🏾 Also Turbo Tax Ux design has evolved from stressful to Impeccable! I did my taxes this year and I didn’t scream or swear not once🤗 it was intuitive, seamless, and consisted concise language and examples.
Favorite product/service either would be Compliance reporting or Music Streaming/radio services
Three things:
1. Thanks for another grrrrrreat video!
2. My educational and career background is really far from UX, however, 6 months ago I googled "what's the difference between UI and UX" out of pure curiosity, and since that time UX topic became my obsession. I can talk about UX/UI for hours. This obsession helped me realize my true passion and now I'm working on changing my career path to eventually become a UX designer. So, I really liked how you mentioned that "obsession" thing cause I know what you mean! :D
3. After watching your video about Oak app I decided to check it out. Guess what, now it's my must-use-at-least-once-a-day app. Love it! It's simple, pleasing to an eye and extremely useful. What I would change about it: I use it on iPad and it seems like it's not well adapted for a tablet - there are empty spaces and it creates some kind of disharmony. Also, I'd improve/add gestures - out of habit I swipe to the right to go back to the menu but the app doesn't react. That's all so far :)
Thanks once again, can't wait for new videos and newsletters!
Thanks for sharing Aimira D.! Nice to hear that you use the Oak app and even nicer to hear that you've found this new "obsession". Best of luck in this new career path. Let us know how it goes.
AJ&Smart Thanks! I will do my best ✊🏻
Phillips hue + whatever voice assistant you use.
The first one could be done by either HUE or the voice assistant, room ownership. Ex.: Bedroom 1 belongs to me, Bedroom 2 belongs to my sister. If I say "turn my bedroom lights off" to my iPhone i would recognise that both are mine and only turn off the correct lights.
This is applicable to many home automation products, but Hue is my favorite...
I really enjoy Asana right now! It's interface is very organized. I also like that they have various options to view your tasks (ex: list, timeline, calendar). It also has a functional home tab where you can see all of your projects. I think it could improve by sorting projects in a binder style format or having a tab for projects so that you can easily access them. It took me a little bit to figure out where I could find the project that I made.
Thank you D Tran! We use Asana ourselves and we like it very much. That suggestion would improve the experience a lot.
I love the part where you’ve mentioned everything is a product. I mean that’s me I see every small product minutely like my planner how it is decorated and has small sticky notes and how I can improve the design...
So I want say about a product name Jira, it’s platform for agile workflow. I like the design and it’s some features for example drag drop or the tickets but my colleague always complain about how complex it is. When the backend developers have to deal with that software they didn’t like it. So I whenever I use it I always think how can it be better
Thanks for sharing your favourite product Amisha Gadhia! Sounds like a great tool. And you're spot on, everything is a product and you should look at things that way if you want to cultivate your passion for products.
AJ&Smart absolutely! So much to learn from you.
I've been enjoying and have reached relative success with the Peak saving app. The overall platform is simple and sleek with cool animated 'peak' icons. One feature I'd like to see added is a budget option to help the user responsibly save without negatively draining their bank account with automatic saves.
Thanks for sharing your favourite product Adair Y!
I love Miro. Desktop is extraordinary. I love the templates and ability to make my own templates Ave they are really accessible. But I do scratch my head when using mobile. I still haven't figured out how to make a new slide 😂. But the camera, making photos of post-its and with ocr it being uploaded as editable text is really cool.
Finally a question that made me stop and think. Also felt a bit bad I didn't think about it before, but you've nailed it in the head! In my own case I don't have products that I love per-se, but I could easily bring up some that I can't live without and would certainly nerd out on a ton of details
For me it is AirBnB. Their focus for iteration to cater for their customers and provide a refreshing experience every time is fascinating to me. I love the conversation on geeking about the little things. The only thing I would add to their unique design collaborative signature is improving the onboarding experience for new users.
As a junior designer job hunting, I keep getting the response on my experience when I apply for mid-level roles. I love this video.
I turned more towards twitter recently. It is great to get in contact with people or companies or just reach out for support. It is less formal and more in the now. You can easily find and join conversations of your interest, or kick one-off by yourself. Just recently I got my first professional coffee invite with a product designer I got to know over Twitter. I hope we can drink one too sometime or eat a Schawarma (What's your favorite btw? I'm still new here).
To answer the question of what to improve, I'd like to explore how providing more options to personalize the "Feed" and/or "Trends", would affect the ecosystem of the twitter community, which relies on the openness to get something trending and visible to all users. For example like the "Bell" to mark other accounts you are more interested in, but I still feel the feed is more dominated by the algorithm behind it that may favor those sources that have the most followers and interactions with their tweets over what a user really chooses to be relevant.
Thank you for the video.
This channel is priceless 👍🏻
Thanks AJ& Smart Yes your right this question i faced in many interviews & failed most of the times will fix this problem...... thanks once again love
I am really enjoying your channel, thank you for sharing such value.
I do think about things around that can be build or design differently or have additional feature, but for recruiters more important is the lack of experience with devs...
My favorite product right now: yoga blocks.
How could I make it better: add some grips or textures to easy attach them together to build new functionalities
I love the google pixel phone but on the new version they took the squeeze feature off, so now to google something I have to talk to it or actually unlock the phone, and press the search button icon. It is a discreet feature that gives speed when googling something.
Learnt great stuff from your channel, that’s for being and making us so passionate about Experience design
Thank you Delineation Art! Glad you like our content!
Thank you so much
I've never thought about it, but I have several products that I love the little details... Thx for sharing w/ us.
My current favorite product is the "Duolingo Mobile App". Just a few months back I was introduced to this app and man what a joy and motivation it brings in me to learn a language? All you need is a tiny bit of interest in you to learn a language and Duolingo takes care of the rest. The way they designed their language courses, the leaderboards, the daily streak, and the notification, everything has an impact on the overall user experience. There are many ways to make the app better, the gamification of learning a language has been pretty good but we need to look at data to understand what makes a user go inactive after fixing a daily learning goal, a little bit of qualitative and quantitative research for those personas might help understand the problem and improve the product/app from there.
Okay, now am gonna continue watching the video.
Thanks for sharing your favourite app and for suggesting how to make it better! And also for stopping the video to think about your answers 😉
My cocktail shaker set. I love it because it allows me to entertain myself and my guests, it makes me look like I know what 'm doing. And I get to explore new recipes and try them with friends. For me a personal improvement would be to have a transparent shaker so I can show off even more. Yes the job to be done is rather emotional :p. But to make it better as a product, I would go out in the field and talk to some bartenders. And enjoy the fruits of their labour as I go about ;).
Thanks for this video!
Thanks for the comment moviemagic!
Yes, until now everybody is talking about a digital product but (call me crazy) I want to talk about the greatest product from all the times (my opinion-maybe because is my passion:)) - the bicycle. More than 200 years the same shape, same concept, same, same almost everything. The new times just came with new materials, some different geometry but the product to be easy to use and functional just remained the same. I think is a super great challenge for designers and engineers to reinvent or redesign the bicycle (I'm still thinking:)) )
Thanks Robert N! The bicycle is a GREAT product! We love our bikes here at the company. There is no need to reinvent the wheel 😉
I am a Salesforce team manager, but I believe that a good Salesforce Admin has to have basic knowledge/feeling for UX. I follow you guys and love your video! Interestingly enough this year for Intern position and for FT position I included these 2 questions in my screening interview (for the same reasons you described). They tell me so much about the person's feel and passion for UX. Thank you for all you do! Keep it up! Love your content! 🌟♥️👍😎
Thanks for the comment Alesia Dvorkina! You are spot on! Those questions reveal your passion for UX and products right away. Nice to hear that you've included those questions in your screening.
Forest, an app that helps you focus. I love it because it is actually a simple Pomodoro-based productivity software where you set a timer for 30-100 minutes, and at the end you plant a tree in a virtual garden. If you give it the right permissions, it will gently send you back to Forest if you open ant other app (a total must for a Reddit addict like me).
But despite it's simple functional aspect, the fact that you plant trees and that the whole atmosphere of the app is built around this concept, makes it FEEL very different. It is the power of branding/visual design personified. But if you take the paid version the app goes a step further: It lets you plant actual real trees in the world through a nonprofit programme they have set up! This also connects the app to an actual purpose that fits its theme.
The thought, care and design appeal together truly makes it a jewel among the apps.
I am madly in love with premium liquor bottle product design
I'm obsessed with how we design societies, stories, and the future. I really want to figure out how to turn those obsessions into value, which I try to do on my own channel, but it's difficult!
For me it has to be the Tide freelancer banking app, not only is the UX great but their product strategy is brilliant!
If you're a Sole Trader in the UK it has everything you need to file your expenses correctly with receipts, and it's actually your bank, not just an accountancy app! They've thought of everything their target market would need with great features that allow you to set up a Limited Company as well. Definitely impressed.
I'd improve it by making the Xero integration better, attached receipts and photos could pull straight into Xero as bills. Currently, if your accountant requires you to use Xero then you might as well not have all the awesome features Tide offers as they don't integrate
Thanks for sharing that great answer and that suggestion Harry Ronchetti! The app sounds impressive.
Thanks for the insight definitely keeping this in mind from now on!!!
My favourite product is iPhone 11. It does not have bezel, uses 3D face recognition which makes unlocking of phone seamless. However it is quite big and heavy to handle. Personally I would make it foldable just like Samsung Galaxy Fold. It makes the phone more compact and interaction with the phone more interesting.
Thank you
My favorite Product right now that I use is the OnePlus Wireless Z Earphones. No, not because they sound good. But they're SUPER convenient. They support fast charging and have a hugee battery backup. They sit on my neck the whole day and I don't need to worry about them getting lost or fall from my ears.
The BEST part is the Quick Switch button. I just need to double tap and the earphone will switch to my last used device. Easy to switch between my computer and phone.
The thing I'd improve is the same - the quick Switch button only works with last 2 devices. If 2nd device is off, it won't try for 3rd. For example my TV.
Hey AJ&Smart, thanks for sharing this!
My favorite product right now is the Apple Pencil. I mostly use it for digital note taking at university on my iPad Pro and it has been an absolute game changer!🙏🏼
I like the idea that it‘s a physical product which not only helps me interacting with digital interfaces but also with creating digital content.
I can now be as perfectionistic and flexible as I want to be because it allows me to replace or remove everything I want to change.
It also really solved my problem of carrying all my notes and printed slides with me. Now I just need to have my iPad with me and still have permanent access everywhere.
However I think Apple was too focused on the design with the first Generation of the Apple Pencil as it is not ergonomically shaped at all and quite heavy. The charging at the lightning port is also a bit annoying.
The second generation is lighter, supports wirless charging is gesture sensitive and is much better to hold. So Apple did quite a good job in improving this great product.
It‘s just a pity that I can‘t switch without buying the latest iPad aswell 🥴😂
Hiii! Team aj and smart let me answer to your first question what's my favourite product. My favorite digital product is urban company. This is a company where you can found your daily basic needs like massage therapy, salon service, AC repairers, Electriction, Plumbers, and many many more other service like this at your door step! And now let me come to your another question is how can you improve it? I can improve it by adding more features and more services like your car mechanic services, and a helping hands services. Which could be very useful while you shift your home for one place to another. And at last good work team aj and smart these kind of tips keeps motivates our ux slack community. Thankyou so much😂❤️❤️❤️😍
The current product that I favor at the moment is One UI on Android. From everything with the complexity of how you can navigate to apps, to the smoothness from transitioning between apps. However, that's also what I would like to improve upon, I want to make the UI more simple. What has always set Android apart from Apple in UI is the simplicity that IOS provides. That is what I firmly believe iPhone has and what makes it more popular than Android phones. Simple features such as "Dynamic Island" satisfy the user's need by implementing quick features that create a less difficult way to use a UI.
I'm doing a marathon of all your videos! Really inspiring. My favourite product is Adobe Creative Cloud, I recently discovered all the apps (in addition to the best known as Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, After Effects, Adobe XD) and it's awesome. I'm challenging myself to learn how to use all of them.
My current favorite product is axxor(apex) helmets, those are very comfortable, safe and very cool and premium looking helmets that in just 5000 rupees or only 60$ to 70$ and they are certified with DOT and ECE. This product is very good for beginner biker and all kind of bikers who looking for good helmet in budget. and improvement i wanna see in this product is giving good quality helmet anti-fog visors i know it will increase the price but its worth to pay extra bucks. Iam sure that improvement will change the thinking about budget level helmets and their product quality issues in bikers mind.
Believe me, it took me barely 10 seconds to actually arrive at answers both these questions
Watching this video after being laid-off, and half-way through I am instantly put off. The whole problem with the tech industry is that your job MUST be you hobby as well. This does not happen in almost any other profession or job-space. So why is it a mandatory requirement here?! Do you think doctors are asked if they are obsessed with operating on people? Or if they do free medical checkup case studies in the weekend as a hobby? Or what was their favourite check-up they ever did, and why? It's absurd.
You can be passionate and love UX Design/ Programming/ Engineering without making it your whole personality. It's absurd if somebody asks me what I do in my free time, and I say go on hikes or read romance novels, it's an instant turn off because my whole life doesn't revolve around my profession.
You can be extremely good at your job whilst only doing it as a job. You don't need to be obsessed with products/ apps/ software in order to be a good designer, as long as you perform your job extremely well. Your work should speak for itself without having to justify your career by being obsessed with it.
What gives me great pleasure is when I buy a product and then end up using it a lot more than initially expected due the the great UX of it. It gives me a feeling that I got good value out of it.
For example I invested in an expensive Dyson Vacuum cleaner. I was hesitant spending that much money. Because, who likes to vacuum? Where I would maybe vacuum once a week because it was so burdensome, I now just grab the Dyson every day, quick manoeuvre it around the kitchen and dining area after dinner before putting it back in its convenient charging station. Making me wonder, how did I ever lived without this thing. That shows great UX to me. The UX is in fact so good, that I almost enjoy vacuum cleaning.
Those are great questions for an interview. Because the answer does not matter, its how they got to that answer. Great tip!
Thanks for sharing Sjors dW! Now we kind of want to buy that vacuum cleaner! It sounds like a very pleasant experience and great UX!
wow! This was so helpful!! I didn't realize how deeply obsessed I am with my nerdy pencil case with all my favorite collection of pens too! (highlighters included)
Haha one of my recent addition to the designer products is Menu wine carafe by Norm Architects. I just love how simple and effective it is.
My favourite product is Webflow❤. I love how they teach (Webflow University and their hilarious marketing), which not only encourages their audience to learn more and more about how to use their product well but also gives a great personality to their brand. How would I improve it? By cleaning their interface up a bit. I know webflow does great stuff, but the interface can be simplified a lot.
physically i like my laptop and mouse and the pad it have. What i want to improve is the lighting the speaker placement, the screen jiggling, and also that i would like it to have a simple stand extending from its base, for mouse i would like it to have some wrist supporting stuff, and also that the touch pad should be moveable or you might say that when i use keyboard of my laptop i place my palms at the sides of touchpad but this causes the pressing which is not sensible, also that i would like he lights to be more bright and control to them, for screen i would like it to have some soft sides and a big size of screen as well , i still love my laptop.
This is a tough one.. for digital projects I am loving Lightroom CC right now because of its cloud syncing capabilities. I would improve it to allow base members with more storage options and the ability to freely access and sync digital file assets from its older Lightroom predecessor. Also I’d add a way for it to show brush masks easily.
For physical products, I’m starting to like my new grow light bc it’s a functional tool. I really dislike the clamp clip it comes with since it is heavy and difficult to open and support the lamp. I’d like to design a base that can be clamped but also sits squarely on a surface while balancing the gooseneck lamp bases!
Good video. If you haven't taken apart & modified most products you have purchased, or never met an interface you couldn't improve, you're not ready for top-shelf UX work.
Thanks for your comment Dana Kaboom!
I like Mural. It's a really good collaboration tool. I would improve the PDF exports. Some exports are truncated. To improve it: Before exporting a board to PDF, I would already prompt the user that the export might be truncated due to the size of the board. So as a user, I don't have to wait for the PDF link sent to my email, just to find out it's truncated.
Also, upon exporting multiple PDFs, I would receive multiple emails with PDFs without titles. I would love to know which ones are which.
Great video!
I am wondering when answering the "what would you do to improve the product" question, can we go directly into improving some of the detailed interactions and designs? Or do we answer it from a higher-level (which I'm not sure how to)
I really like spotify. it caters to all listening needs. I get Tedx, podcasts. I love the standard playlists it has. Makes listening interesting. it gives basic videos and background to the song playing
Digital- Amazon the UI is cluttered and like others though my cart is full of wish list items. I wish there was a way to categorize them either by item type or immediacy of need.
Physical- cast iron pan, I wish there was a way to make them less heavy.