My Thoughts - Nam Vu Personal Site

July 25, 2021

Setup a family printer with a Raspberry Pi 1, CUPS and Canon LBP 2900

Ok so after using it as an Media Server (OSMC, Kodi), Audio Server (Volumio, Moode), and most recently a CloudFlare DDNS updater on top of Raspbian Lite, I’m running out of things to do with my old RPi. I figure there’s one thing I haven’t tried turning it into: a print server. So that’s what we’re gonna do today.

Now this is actually one of the most common usage of the Pi so there’s already plenty of guides out there, and there’s really no information in this post that can’t be found elsewhere on the Internet, but I’m gonna do a write up anyway, purely for the sake of documenting my process.

For the software we’ll be using CUPS running on top of Linux, naturally, since we don’t have a lot of options on that front. For the hardware, we’ll be using a first gen Raspberry Pi for the print server part, and Canon LBP 2900 for the actual printing.

Now this printer is interesting really, because despite being one of the most popular printers here in Vietnam, it’s not in the list of printer supported by CUPS. I reckon its popularity is fueled by its economical nature, it’s one of the very few laser printers that fall into the ‘cheap to buy, cheap to maintain’ segment (it costs like $150 brand new, and cartridge replacement is like $3.85, which is insane!). So getting it to work with CUPS is going to require a bit more works, but thankfully there’s an open source driver out there that somebody reverse engineered to our benefits, so we’ll be using that.

July 21, 2021

Why isn’t anybody talking about Webmin’s awesome facelift?

So I’ve been fiddling around with remote management tools for my home server recently, after accidentally discovering Cockpit after installing Fedora (it comes preinstalled with Fedora Server 34), I started looking around for alternatives. Don’t get me wrong Cockpit is great but being a DIY I always wanted to see what kind of options are out there.

During my search I came across a vaguely familiar name: Webmin. I had limited experience with Webmin before when I was searching for a decent web panel for my VPS since it is the basis on which Virtualmin is based on. I quickly dropped it due to the horribly outdated UI (it’s a designer’s quirk, don’t ask).

Revisiting it a few years later, I just couldn’t believe my eyes when I first fire up the program, the difference is like Night and Day! Even literally more so since the current version even includes a proper dark mode that can be toggled in real time! How awesome is that?

Check out this before-after comparison:

July 20, 2021

Conducting User Interviews

As a UX designer, you’ll always focus on the user and the experience they’ll have with the product you’re designing. In this course, you’ll learn about the first phase of the design process, empathizing with users, which is critical when it comes to creating a great user experience. In order to empathize with users and understand their pain points, you’ll need to conduct interviews with real people who might use the product you’re designing.

Prepare for the interview: Interview preparation checklist as the the user researches on the computer

Whether you’re conducting interviews in person or online, it’s important to be prepared before you speak with real users. You want to make the most of your limited time together and learn as much as you can about their unique perspectives. Here are a few things you can do to prepare for interviews:

July 19, 2021

Understand empathy in UX design

The name UX design says it all: the user’s experience is at the center of how we design products. The best way for you to create great user experiences is to know and empathize with your user. As you might recall, empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s feelings or thoughts in a situation.

As a UX designer, empathizing with users enhances the products you create because you experience the product as your user does. The better you are at anticipating a user’s desires and needs, the more comfortable the user will feel with your design, and the more likely they will be to engage with your product long-term.

So, let’s explore how empathy can make you a more effective UX designer!

How to empathize with users

If empathizing with users sounds like a big task, fear not! The ability to empathize with users is a skill that can be learned with practice. Here are six tips that can help you become a more empathetic UX designer.

July 12, 2021

Common UX Research Methods

Understanding your users is one of the most essential parts of UX design. You’ve already learned about the problems that can come up when designers make assumptions about their users and their needs. So how do you avoid making those assumptions? By doing research! In this reading, you’ll explore some common research methods used by UX designers.

Types of research

There are two ways to categorize research: who conducts the research and the type of data collected.

The first way to categorize research is based on whoconducts the research: primary research and secondary research.

Primary research is research you conduct yourself. Information from direct interactions with users, like interviews, surveys, or usability studies, are considered primary research.

Secondary research is research that uses information someone else has put together. For example, using information from sources like books, articles, or journals is considered secondary research.

The second way to categorize research is based on the type of data collected: qualitative or quantitative.

Qualitative research is primarily collected through observations and conversations. Qualitative research is based on understanding users’ needs and aims to answer questions like “why” or “how did this happen?”

Quantitative research focuses on data that can be gathered by counting or measuring. Quantitative research is based on numerical data that’s often collected from large-scale surveys. This type of research aims to answer questions like “how many?” and “how much?”

All four of these types of research can intermix. Primary and secondary research can be both qualitative and quantitative. For example, an interview is qualitative research. An interview conducted by you is primary research. If you review an article about an interview conducted by someone else, it’s secondary research. It’s important to be able to identify the difference between these types of research because the data you collect forms the basis of your design decisions.

July 12, 2021

Different types of UX researches in the product development cylce

There are two key parts to every UX design project: conducting research to learn about the users you’re designing for, and gathering feedback about their perspectives. UX design is all about putting the user first, and research helps designers understand those users.

UX research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation and feedback. Your product design should be built upon research and facts, not assumptions. UX research aligns what you, as the designer, think the user needs with what the user actually needs.

Remember the product development life cycle from an earlier course of the program? The product development life cycle has five stages — brainstorm, define, design, test, and launch — that take an idea for an app, website, or product to its launch.

Let’s check out how research fits into the product development life cycle.

Graphic showing the product development lifecycle, represented by a circle — Around the circle, there are other icons that represent the phases of the product development lifecycle – Brainstorm, Define, Design, Test, Launch. New additional phases branch out from the cycle, including Foundational research (from the brainstorm phase), Design research (from the design phase), and post-launch research (from the launch phase)

July 2, 2021

Overcoming impostor syndrome

Have you ever felt like you aren’t quite good enough, even though you actually are? Feeling like you aren’t good enough to do a certain job or mingle with certain people happens to more people than you might think. In fact, feeling this way is so common that it even has a name: impostor syndrome.

Impostor syndrome is the belief that you’re unskilled, inferior to others, or bad at your job, despite your successes. We’ve all felt impostor syndrome at some point in our lives. If you’re feeling impostor syndrome, you’re certainly not alone!

Effects of impostor syndrome

Impostor syndrome can cause anxiety and low confidence that can stop you from becoming the most successful version of yourself. Impostor syndrome can manifest in many ways, and each person’s experience is unique. You might have seen or personally experienced impostor syndrome in situations like:

June 28, 2021

What is a retrospective?

If you operate in an Agile/Scrum work pipeline, at the end of each sprint you’ll be asked to participate in a ‘retrospective’ meeting (or ‘retro’, for short).

A retrospective is a collaborative critique of the design sprint. The goal of a retrospective is to make sure everyone who took part in the sprint has the chance to give feedback and think about opportunities for improvement.

The key questions to ask during a retrospective are:

What went well?
What can be improved?

Answering these questions will help you work better as a team and as an individual. Make sure everyone feels empowered to share their experiences, and that personal identifiers, like race or gender, don’t prevent members from being honest. Before the retrospective begins, tell the group that any feedback provided will be used to reflect on the experience and improve the process for the next sprint.

June 24, 2021

Designing for Multiple Platforms: The Four Cs Principle

Successfully designing across platforms means providing users with a good experience, no matter what platform they use! As a UX designer, your job is to make sure that your designs account for and take full advantage of the unique features of each platform. When preparing to design across platforms, it’s helpful to keep in mind the four Cs: consistency, continuity, context, and complementary.

Graphic from the point of view of someone looking at their hands on a laptop. They are holding a phone and wearing a watch.

Consistency: Most companies have specific design guidelines that need to be followed in order to stay consistent with their brand identity, which refers to the visual appearance and voice of a company. When designing a product, it’s essential to stay true to the company’s brand guidelines in order to maintain consistency across platforms and drive brand awareness. Maintaining a consistent design helps improve the user experience and build trust, because users can expect the design to feel familiar across platforms and products.

June 24, 2021

My UX Design Toolbox

Just like carpenters rely on different tools for different tasks, so do UX designers. Start adding some tools to your digital toolbox and explore a few of the most popular programs that you might use as an entry-level UX designer.

A person with long hair stands in front of toolbox holding a laptop. Text above reads wireframing and prototyping tools

Early in your UX design career, you’ll likely spend a lot of time creating wireframes and prototypes.

A wireframe is an outline or a sketch of a product or a screen. Wireframes help designers figure out how a page is arranged, where each piece of a product fits in with the others, and how users will likely interact with the product.
A prototype is an early model of a product that demonstrates functionality.

You’ll learn much more about wireframes and prototypes, and create your own, as you progress through this certificate program.

There are tons of digital tools available to help you design wireframes and prototypes. The most popular tools among them are Figma and Adobe XD due to their availability:

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