the UX skill nobody teaches you but decides your career

0:00 This is how many people want to become a UX designer today This is how many people actually have the job This is the ones making over 100k USD a year And this is the designers making over 300k USD a year Designers get very different pay even in the same office And I spent years in big tech trying to understand what do I need to learn to get myself into that top earning group of designers Turns out

0:24 the skill set that sets these designers apart from the rest of us is not in Figma It sounds way too simple to matter and that is why I ignored it for years To understand what it is why it matters we first need to understand what defines the ceiling of a design career Take a guess what is it? It is whether you have a seat at the table during the early product discovery meeting If you don't have a seat in this meeting room

0:46 your ceiling is low But if you do your growth potential is much higher Here is why When you learn UX design in school you’re taught to go through this full discovery phase You do UX research empathize with users synthesize findings to get to a well-defined problem That is the theory In reality when I entered the real world I realized most people don’t understand what UX design is They treat designers as visualizers People come up the solution directly

1:12 and then ask me to design the high fidelity screens right away If you are in this position your design is capped by how well these stakeholders think about the product and they are not trained designers so the average quality is pretty low Even if your design turns out great the people who made those early decisions in those discovery meetings strategies meetings they are the ones who get the credit they get promoted not you And I had to work my way into these meeting rooms

1:37 First I changed my title from UI/UX designer to product designer because I want to signal that I'm here to help shape the product not just here to decorate screens Second together with my manager and the design team we had to pitch over and over again on why design should be involved in those early discovery meetings when important product decisions are made So in one word the skill is communication That's definitely not the major My parents want me to take back in college

2:04 but the skill that gets you your first client project gets you pass a job interview gets you a seat at the table gets your ideas implemented and finally gets you a higher paycheck All comes down to communication You get what you pitch for and you are always pitching It's not something that you can learn in a technical way But here's what I can do In every part of the design process there's an opportunity to communicate better

2:26 I will break this process down So you will leave this video with a set of tangible things to do You'll also learn one tool that can help you along the way and that is Granola On the surface it looks like an AI note-taking tool but it's so much more than that It can seriously improve your communication And that is why most of my friends working in AI and tech use it on an hourly basis The link to Granola is in the description

2:48 if you want to try it for free More on that later First top designers don’t skip the problem space and jump right into the solution They've been through this cycle enough times to know that if the foundation is wrong it will cost much more time later Even if the leadership asks you to design something in a day If you start designing right away that one day project will for sure turn into a one quarter project I've been in this situation so many times

3:14 not fun Nothing is more urgent than figuring out the right problem So instead of jumping straight into design set up meetings to understand at least these three things First what is the goal of the project? Second what is the business strategy behind it? And third who are the key stakeholders and what do they care about? At the end of the day we're working inside an organization and if we understand what each stakeholder cares about that becomes our biggest negotiation leverage later on

3:40 when we need them to buy into our plan Now this part is not easy It takes courage to speak up and initiate these conversations I have never met a designer who enjoys meetings but one good meeting early can save you from 20 messy meetings later If you don't know how to get started today you can use AI to help And I will use Granola as an example When I need to draft a pitch I go to Granola

4:02 On the left sidebar I click Chat and I’ll just ask it to help me write a message Here I will say: help me write a message to my PM Elizabeth to set up a quick meeting for this new project I want to clarify goals and align direction Elizabeth is really busy and she often rejects meetings so make sure to persuade her to join by clarifying why it benefits her I'll click send in a few seconds I get a message I can use right away

4:25 What makes Granola different from other AI tools is that it has all my past meeting transcript with Elizabeth Every time I join a meeting I use Granola to take notes so it has the context on who Elizabeth is her communication style and what she cares about So when it writes something it’s very targeted and never generic I like to use AI as a starting point I think AI can be a great assistant But I never treat AI as my boss

4:51 I always review the message adjust the tone and only send it if I truly believe it’s strong Not when AI think it’s strong If you haven’t leveraged AI in this way yet Don't worry you are not behind I will show you more about it in later chapters so stick around Once you understand the problem the next step is actually getting the chance to talk to users And this is where a lot of designers get stuck Because this is not just a design task

5:15 it's a communication task You need to convince your product manager and your UX researcher it's worth doing research early and you can use the trick I shared from the last chapter And once you've convinced the team to move forward the focus is not writing a perfect research plan It's getting the meetings with your users on that calendar If you wait until everything is perfectly prepared that user interview will never happen And honestly in early user interviews

5:41 you don't need a perfect script It is much more important to be a good listener Let users talk about their situation and when you talk to users ideally you want another person to take notes for you That way you can focus fully on the conversation instead of typing and listening at the same time which I used to do pretty often And one important detail is how notes are taken The best notes are not rewritten summaries They should stay as close as possible to what the users actually said

6:08 A lot of people don't know this and they try to rephrase what the users said but in reality you are changing the tone any time you are rephrasing something So don't do that And if you don't have another person to take notes for you you can record the meeting look at it later and then take notes by yourself But I just happen to be a person that hates looking at my own meeting so I use this other trick

6:27 And let me show you how to use Granola for note taking Once you sign up to Granola with your work email every time you join a meeting you'll see this notification popping up just click “Take Notes” and then Granola will start transcribing the entire conversation You can pause or stop it any time using the square button right here After the meeting you can click “Generate Notes” and Granola will turn the conversation into structured notes for you

6:51 This is so much better than trying to type everything yourself You stay present in the conversation and you still get accurate notes afterward If you want to learn more about any specific line in the notes just click the search icon on the right Then you will see a transcript summary with direct quotes If you click the quote it will take you to the exact part of the original transcript So you can see what the user actually said

7:13 before any rephrasing or summary One important thing AI is not magic It doesn’t read your mind So if you had an idea during or after the user interview but you didn't write it down then it won't magically appear in the notes So please still make sure you capture your own thoughts And if you want to restructure your notes you can do it yourself or you can use a Granola template Go to the top and select “Enhanced”

7:34 Then you can choose from any pre-built template I like to use the “Customer Discovery template” which works amazingly well for user interviews There's also another template literally called “User Interview” feel free to try that one too There's another really important meeting a top tier designer loves to set up during the early stage of a project and that is running an effective kickoff meeting that bring in all the relevant stakeholders together That includes engineers content designers legal UX researchers marketers PMS and sometimes leadership

8:03 The goal of this meeting is to get everyone in the same room early let people share ideas and constraints early on You will be surprised on how many constraints exist Engineers will tell you what's technically impossible to do and Legal will tell you what is not allowed And if you don't hear these early you'll probably go through an experience like this You spend months designing a project trying to align everyone through separate meetings and then finally you get to talk to the legal person

8:28 and then he tells you that this entire design pattern not allowed in Europe That is why it is so important to have these kickoff meetings You get all the concerns out early align everyone early and avoid having to run 20 separate meetings later just to fix things And here's a quick tip for these kickoff meetings Sometimes you will be in a room where people are speaking the same language but you still don't understand anything Business terms Engineering terms...

8:51 It happens all the time The best thing you can do is just ask the dumb question You are choosing between being confused for three minutes versus being confused for three months The previous choice is better And if you really don't have the guts the second best thing you can do is leverage the power of AI to your advantage For example if you're using Granola for notetaking you can click “Ask anything” right here at any time and then use the Chat feature to ask question

9:16 I bet the most asked question is “What did I miss” They even made it into a recipe which is just how you call these little badges that you can click right away to ask things You can explore more recipes by typing slash on your keyboard Some help you summarize some suggest questions There’s even a joke one… I tried it it’s not bad I still think I'm funnier but Granola definitely knows more fun facts than I do

9:39 If using these AI features bring your joy use them If you think they are distracting your feeling is also valid The goal is to stay present understand what's going on make sure everyone is aligned early no matter what method or tool you are using we've covered how to start a project strong Now let's talk about the design part the solution space When I started my career I used to lock myself in a room design for hours

10:03 make everything as perfect as possible and then finally show it to my boss and my team In my head I imagined everyone would be so impressed and say “Oh my God! Aliena, this is amazing!” That is exactly the opposite workflow you should use if you want a higher paycheck Great design does not happen in isolation Great design happens in meetings When you are bringing a feature to life you are not doing it alone I work super close with a product manager and a content designer

10:30 The product manager understands the business side talks to everyone aligns everything and has a lot of power The content designer writes the content which is the text and she is just as important especially to those B2B products where it is really difficult to explain the concepts So instead of disappearing and designing everything alone I just like to set up a one hour meeting sometimes 30 minutes with these two people And then we would design together in Zoom

10:54 and I will open Figma and I would wireframe different directions on the spot We would all throw out ideas react to them immediately and give feedback right away Because the ideas were created so fast in a very low fidelity nobody gets emotionally attached and that made the whole process so much easier We became much more open to exploring because nothing felt too precious yet And one very important part of this process is good documentation You need to capture what directions were explored

11:20 what people liked and what people didn't like And back then I typed all of this manually There were a lot of grammar mistakes but it still worked Now I would leverage Granola AI just use the “Ask Anything” feature again which is the big text box here Then I would ask something like “Summarize what we liked and didn’t like about this direction” I like this result so I will copy it also to Figma This matters because later

11:42 when you present to a bigger team or to the leadership and then when people ask you “did you choose that direction?” Instead of trying to remember on the spot you can just show you explored it You show your annotations and you can explain based on your notes There's one more technical thing I want you to learn and that is how to use Granola MCP Even if you don't use it right away I want you to at least understand what MCP is

12:05 because this term is going to come up again and again in this AI revolution Like Figma MCP MCP stands for Model Context Protocol And when I first heard it I thought it sounds too technical so I walked away Don't do this because it is so much simpler than it sounds MCP just means connecting one AI tool to other tools So when we say Granola MCP it just means Granola can connect with other apps like Claude or ChatGPT

12:30 If you have a paid Claude or ChatGPT account you can connect Granola to Claude or ChatGPT Here's how I connect Granola with ChatGPT Open ChatGPT and sign in then go to Settings search for Granola and connect it That's it Once it is connected you can use Granola inside ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT to reference your meetings This can help with things like reviewing meeting notes drafting proposals and so much more Once you switch from designing alone to designing in meetings

13:00 two great things happen First is that you get more free time Imagine every Thursday you get a no meeting Thursday where you block the entire day for focus time but in reality you are just focusing on walking your dog in the park Well definitely don't say I told you to do this I was just talking about my friend Elizabeth She does it You get this free time Because the hardest part of design is making those high level decisions

13:22 Like where to place which section? How does the flow work? Where do you put the entry point for this new product? Those decisions are already made when you were working with your PM and the content designer So now your job is just to take those chosen decisions and polish it from low fidelity to high fidelity using your design system That part is fast The second good thing that happens is: you get support Because people in those meetings are already aligned with you

13:48 So later when you present the work to a bigger group your product manager and content designer are not just watching from the side They understand the reasoning and they can back you up It's like you suddenly have this little squad defending the work with you and that is amazing So if you are designing in isolation right now change that Do whatever you can to move toward designing in meetings Because top designers do not disappear for two weeks

14:11 and come back with perfect screens They think with people make decisions with people That is why their work gets supported and gets implemented Designing with a team is great but there is a trap If you only rely on internal feedback you're still guessing Most of the time we are not the user of the product we design So even if the team feels great about a solution that does not mean the users will buy it That is why usability testing matters

14:37 Go back to users and show them your solution You want to see how real people use what you designed And I know what you are going to say “We don't have time” No project ever has enough time Usability testing only takes one afternoon It is the same amount of time if you were to drive to a shopping mall buy a dress and then come back Probably less than that The easiest way for usability testing is just

14:58 share your Figma prototype on a call and I like to begin by setting expectations I tell the user this might or might not solve their problem and if anything feels confusing it is not their fault It is our fault And please tell us Then I ask them to walk me through what they are seeing and what they want to do next Here's the key Before they click on anything I always ask “What do you expect to see when you click this?”

15:21 This is where the real insight comes from You're comparing their expectation with your design and your goal is to make those two match as closely as possible Good design is not about surprising users It's about making things feel so clear and so natural that they move through the product without friction For note-taking You can use Granola if you don't have anyone to help you I also recommend taking some screenshots so you can later annotate what exactly needs to be changed

15:45 And after the meeting you can use something like the user interview template to organize your notes But even if you took a really clear note I would still suggest you to screen record the entire meeting because there's a trick you can use and I'll tell you later And that brings me to the next topic which is how to design presentation in a larger audience In a small team things are easy People jump in all the time ask questions

16:06 and it feels more like a collaboration than a formal presentation But when it comes to those kind of meetings with 30 people in the room some from leadership some from the partner team you are the one presenting the project pitching the idea or just giving a progress update with a slideshow Oh my God That is a very different game and it feels stressful and formal I haven't done one of those presentations for a while So if you have some tricks share it in the comment

16:30 And here is mine First do not try to sound smart Try to be clear I get so frustrated when people do this Imagine this one dude talks for 30 minutes non stop only with the jargon from their own field and in full monotone with zero interaction Oh my God what a torture Even if he has a brilliant idea who do you think will have the patience to keep up with that? So I like to use simple words and I don't talk UX

16:55 I talk either like a normal human being or I talk business If something can be explained in two sentences I don't use ten And here's how a presentation usually goes for me “As a reminder this is a problem we're solving Right now the user is frustrated because look at this workflow” “Our users are saying things like ABC And from a business standpoint we're missing on this opportunity of how many million dollars per year” Then I pause and ask

17:19 “Any quick questions before I move on?” If you are on Zoom you can even just say “If this makes sense, feel free to react with an emoji” This is intentional interaction design to keep people on the same page and pay attention And if someone asks a question don't panic Let them ask You know this project better than anyone else in the room so 99% of the time you can answer it But if you need a few extra seconds to think here are tricks

17:43 you can say “Thank you so much for asking Could you please rephrase your question for me again?” Or even “I’m curious about what made you ask the question” It also helps you to understand your question a bit better And if you really don't have an answer to their question you can also say “That is a great question Actually Ben and I worked on this project together and I think Ben must have something great to say here

18:02 Hey Ben are you here? Elizabeth was just asking about blah blah blah What do you think Ben?” Then the poor Ben jumps in and then saves you Then when I get to the solution I like to say the good news is “The good news is after two months of work and thanks to Ben Elizabeth Peter ABCDE we landed on a solution that works really well” I mention these people by name so now they are alert and ready to defend for me

18:23 Then I show the solution clearly Sometimes I click through the prototype myself Other times I will say “Peter imagine you are the user here What would you do first?” Then Peter says what he wants to do and then I click through it live Now people are not just watching They're also thinking with you And then this next trick connects back to the last chapter After you show the solution Show a one-minute video of real users reacting to the prototype positively

18:45 And of course don't fake it When people hear actual users saying “I love it” or “this is so much easier” It hits differently emotionally I did that with a few of my projects back when I was working for eBay and I think probably someone else told me this trick and it worked so well all the time And then at the end I close with something like “That’s the project update I’m happy to answer any questions Thank you for staying with me”

19:08 And most of the time people would react pretty positively Not because you sounded smart or you used all your jargon but rather because you made it easy for them to care and understand Now hearing these tips and actually practising them are still two completely different things So this year make communication one of your top priorities on things to improve on and how do you improve on communication? The answer is getting feedback After a presentation or even after a meeting

19:34 you can always ask your colleagues “What worked well in my presentation?” “What do you think I could improve on?” It's so valuable because most of us are not really good at judging our own communication And if asking people directly still feels like too big of a step then you can take the middle ground And that is asking AI for feedback If you are already using Granola for your meetings it already has your past transcripts so you can go to the sidebar

19:58 click Chat and ask questions like “How was my communication overall this week and what should I improve?” Just wait until it gives you the feedback Granola also has recipes that can give you direct feedback that goes beyond communication like business feedback or life coach feedback And there's this recipe called “Coach Me Matt” Oh my god I need to warn you about Matt I don't like Matt Matt was so strict to me He went straight into what I was doing wrong and I'm too weak for that

20:25 I preferred the sandwich method or you compliment first and then you tell me what to do better and then you compliment again But don't worry Not all recipes are like Matt Granola in general has a really friendly tone and if you are interested try it out Link in the description Maybe you can handle Matt I used to treat meetings as something to get through so I can go back to the “real work” on the canvas If there's one idea I want you to leave this video with

20:49 it is this one Meetings are not the annoying by-product of your design job They are the job Meetings are where decisions are made where alignment happens and where your impact as a designer gets seen Once you switch this mindset your career only takes off from here If you want a dedicated tutorial on how to use Granola comment “Granola” and if you want me to break down how to optimize your communication for job search comment “UX job”

21:13 and I’ll consider making it I’m Aliena Cai I talk about design tech and business If you like this video you will also like this video so I will see you there Subscribe like and turn on all notifications I also run a Figma-trusted design bootcamp at Fast Track UX And if you are someone who seriously wants a better paid design job this year check out my program BYEEEE