Hey everyone! I wanted to work through the student project to give you an example. You can share anything you want with your student project, you can even rank you design niche YES or NO questions with how many had the most YES answers etc. Feel free to be open and honest with how you feel about finding your next design focus, any fears, dreams, ideas and thoughts! 

I encourage you to create your own student project. 

My top 3 (These had almost all YES answers)
UX/UI Design
Package Design
Print Design

I have decided to focus on UX/UI Design for the questions below:

A few questions to answer after choosing your 3 focal areas: 

Is there any new software I need to learn? If so which ones? Create your list with the top in the list being first priority.
Wireframing Tools (Adobe Xd, Sketch etc.) 
I am going to focus on Adobe Xd as I am already familiar with Adobe products

Next, I am going to focus on learning overflow, a new app that can help me create customer journey maps. 

Is there any design theory I need to brush up on? If so, what? 
Sketching, Drawing - I know wireframing can also include a lot of hand sketches, I want to explore how to hand draw wireframes and study which symbols need to be use to indicate certain states and conditions. 

UX (user experience) Theory - I want to learn how to create a user persona and do better user and data research

I may need to do a few practice projects first before taking on client work, what will be my first practice project in this niche? Example: Social Media Ad Campaign, Web Design Layout, Logo Design

I am going to create a mobile app based on a real world company (Target). I am going to work through the UX process and do user research. Afterwards I am going to try to find a way to make this companies mobile app a better experience. I want to detail my thought process as I want to share this with potential clients and also building up a portfolio, so I can eventually have a full-time job at a company doing UX/UI Design.

Fears, Hopes, Dreams about shifting to a new design focus/niche? 
I do fear that I may not enjoy the research side when I get into real client work and projects. I love data and research but I spent my whole career doing just creative projects and tasks. 

Dreams: My hope with this design shift is to focus on UX/UI design but also still take on work from my other two focuses, package and print design and see how it goes from there. If UX/UI takes off and I end up making more per hour, I will slowly shift toward full time UX/UI work.

My DREAM is to make this shift to be in a new and growing design field, so I can feel like I am creating real living products that makes lives easier. 

I encourage you to create your student project. You can also join the student facebook page to connect with other designers to ask questions and share what you are working on! Link Here.