The Best YouTube Channels for UX Designers in 2025 (Worth Your Actual Time)
The problem with most YouTube channel lists for UX designers is that they don't distinguish between what's useful when you're learning the basics and what's useful when you've been doing this for five years.
At junior level, you need frameworks, vocabulary, and enough process fluency to get through your first projects. At senior level, you need sharper thinking on research interpretation, facilitation, systems, and the messy parts of cross-functional work that portfolio tutorials don't cover.
The channels below are selected for what they offer working UX designers — people with real projects, real constraints, and limited time to spend on content that doesn't move them forward.
AJ&Smart — for facilitation, strategy, and design leadership
AJ&Smart is the most useful channel in the space if you work on or with cross-functional teams. The focus is design sprints, facilitation, and the strategic layer of product design work — how to structure workshops, how to get alignment, how to make good decisions fast under pressure.
The channel is run by people who do this work with real clients, which shows in the specificity of the advice. It's less about visual craft and more about the process decisions that determine whether design has influence in an organisation. That's an underserved topic on YouTube.
CharliMarieTV — for career thinking and design leadership
CharliMarieTV covers the career and professional development side of design work with more honesty and specificity than most channels. Charli has worked in-house at major companies, gone independent, and documented the process — which makes the career content credible rather than aspirational.
The channel is useful when you're thinking about progression: moving into leadership, making the in-house vs. freelance decision, understanding what senior actually means in practice. The income report videos in particular are more transparent about the economics of design work than anything else I've seen on YouTube.
Jesse Showalter — for research methods and UX process
Jesse Showalter's channel covers UX process alongside frontend implementation. The UX content is practical and method-focused — how to structure usability testing, how to present findings, how to work through research synthesis.
The channel is most useful for designers who want to strengthen their research practice alongside their design skills. Not every video is equally strong, but the content on UX workflow and stakeholder communication is among the more honest and practical on YouTube.
CareerFoundry — for structured UX methodology
CareerFoundry's channel covers UX methodology with more depth and structure than most. The portfolio and career content is aimed at people transitioning into UX, but the process and methodology videos — how to frame a research question, how to conduct interviews, how to synthesise findings — are useful at any stage.
The channel is particularly good for designers who came into UX from a visual design background and want to strengthen the research and strategy side of their practice. The production quality is high and the explanations are clear.
What's missing from YouTube UX content
It's worth naming what YouTube doesn't cover well for experienced UX designers. Research synthesis at the messy stage — when you have 30 hours of interviews and conflicting signals — is rarely covered with any honesty. Accessibility as a design practice (not just a checklist) is mostly absent. The empathy mapping and user research content that does exist tends to show clean examples that don't reflect actual research conditions.
For that kind of depth, Nielsen Norman Group's articles and reports are more useful than their YouTube channel. The Rosenfeld Media library. Published case studies from companies who have done the work and written about it honestly.
YouTube is excellent for process understanding, career thinking, and staying connected to what the field is discussing. It's not the right medium for the depth that distinguishes good research from surface-level research.
The most useful habit: follow one or two channels consistently for the thinking, and supplement with written material for the depth.
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Looking for UI design, motion, and frontend-adjacent content? The best YouTube channels for UI designers covers different ground.