Tips & Tricks - Nam Vu Personal Site

April 22, 2022

About UX Research

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.

October 12, 2021

“Invalid Location” error when trying to add SynoCommunity Repo

I presume you’re here from Google, trying to find a solution on why Synology DSM is not accepting SynoCommunity‘s repo, returning a cryptic “Invalid Location” error. You’re probably running DSM 6.2.4 or older, and currently unable to upgrade to DSM due to uh, various considerations (*cough*xpenology*cough*).

Turns out it’s a SSL error, not sure if it’s related to Let’s Encrypt’s root certificate expiring a few weeks ago knocking out a sizable chunk of the web, but thanks to @publicarray over on SynoCommunity’s Discord, we have a solution

Publicarray's solution from Discord — Publicarray’s solution from Discord

Here’s the SSH command for your convenience:

August 18, 2021

Install Photoshop CC on Linux

Screenshot — Install Photoshop CC on Linux 5

No, this is not GIMPShop or any other dirty hacks that attempt to make GIMP/Krita look or feel like Photoshop. This is the real Photoshop. And no, Adobe hasn’t changed their mind about making a native Linux version available either. As you may have guessed, despite the fancy new splash screen, this is just Photoshop CC running on Wine, but it has been repacked so the installer does everything for you. If you already have a PS + Wine in place there’s no need to read this.

Bits of warning though, I’m not entirely sure this is legal since the authentication part appears to be bypassed also. While I do have an active subscription to Adobe CC, I haven’t been able to find a way to sign in with this. If this repo gets popular Adobe might kill it, so just keep that in mind.

Anyway, you can find the instruction here in this Github, I’m not going to mirror the instruction in this blog post (unless the repo goes down for some reason, in which case, let me know in a comment below)

July 30, 2021

Apt-get update chậm như rùa? Hãy chuyển sang dùng mirror trong nước

The following post content will be written in Vietnamese since it addresses a specific problem that only affect Ubuntu users currently residing in Vietnam

Mấy ngày hôm nay mấy anh em dùng Ubuntu như tôi chắc khốn khổ vì chạy cái apt update cũng phải mất cả nửa ngày. Lí do thì vẫn như thường lệ, cá mập cắn cáp AAG, chuyện năm nào cũng xảy ra đều như vắt chanh mỗi năm khi đất nước có ngày hội lớn. Chúng ta bất lực với cá mập nhưng không có nghĩa chúng ta không có cách khác để giải quyết. Nếu các bạn check danh sách mirrors của Ubuntu sẽ thấy VN là 1 trong những nước có tương đối nhiều mirrors với 9 cái:

Apt-get update chậm như rùa? Hãy chuyển sang dùng mirror trong nước 8

Điều này có nghĩa chúng ta hoàn toàn có thể sử dụng mirrors trong nước để gia tăng tốc độ cho apt. Trong những phiên bản gần đây của Ubuntu chức năng tìm mirror đã được build luôn vào trong apt get nhưng ko được enable mặc định. Vì vậy để enable features này chúng ta cần thêm những dòng sau vào file /etc/apt/sources.list

deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt focal main restricted universe multiverse
deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt focal-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt focal-security main restricted universe multiverse

(Lưu ý VD trên là dành cho Ubuntu 20.04, nếu các bạn dùng Ubuntu bản khác thì nhớ thay thế code name focal bằng code name của version tương ứng Lucid, Precise etc.)

Chạy lại apt update và chứng kiến sự thay đổi kinh hoàng trong tốc độ:

Apt-get update chậm như rùa? Hãy chuyển sang dùng mirror trong nước 9

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!

YhebYBq — Overcoming impostor syndrome 11

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. — Designing for Multiple Platforms: The Four Cs Principle 13

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 — My UX Design Toolbox 15

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:

June 17, 2021

Common UX Design Frameworks (part 2): Lean UX and Double Diamond

Following the previous post, today we’ll be talking about 2 more UX Design frameworks.

Lean UX

The Lean UX process focuses on reducing wasted time and resources, and producing a workable product as soon as possible. The process is iterative, meaning the team continues to update and make revisions to the product as they gather user research and stakeholder feedback.

The Lean UX process is broken into three steps:

Think. Explore the problems that users are experiencing and consider how you could solve them with your design. This step is all about gathering research, so you can form a clear idea of who the product is for and how it will help them.

Make. Start designing the product by creating sketches, wireframes, and prototypes. You’ll also create a minimum viable product, or MVP for short, which is a simple prototype of your designs that you can test with the target audience. Be prepared to go back and update your prototype as you gather feedback!

Check. Find out how users respond to your design and gather feedback from project stakeholders. Make adjustments to your designs accordingly, and repeat the three steps again, if necessary.

https://d3c33hcgiwev3.cloudfront.net/imageAssetProxy.v1/LoTVh-MXRrqE1YfjFwa6VA_84ea0180d9af4f58ae003ec3df328fa2_Screenshot-2021-03-02-at-11.36.43-PM.png?expiry=1624147200000&hmac=zVH8GLRLG-Mw2cTVwBOMMPgBYUmZdBY60Y_EFfeLpPg — Common UX Design Frameworks (part 2): Lean UX and Double Diamond 17

These steps are meant to be repeated as many times as needed, until your team reaches the desired final product. The Lean UX process encourages productivity and collaboration. Lean UX teams are typically cross-functional, which means you’ll be working alongside team members like engineers and UX researchers.

June 16, 2021

Common UX Design Frameworks (part 1): Design Thinking Process and the Five Elements approach

There’s many UX Design Frameworks out there, most common among them are Design Thinking Process and the Five Elements.

Design thinking process

Design thinking is a user-centered approach to problem-solving. It helps designers create solutions that address a real user problem and are functional and affordable. There are five phases in the design thinking process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. If these sounds familiar that’s because it is based on one of the core principles of UX design which is the Product Design Cycle which I’ve mentioned in an earlier post.

Each phase of the framework answers a specific question.

Icons that represent the design thinking process - empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. — Common UX Design Frameworks (part 1): Design Thinking Process and the Five Elements approach 19

During the empathize phase, the goal is to understand users’ needs and how users think and feel. This involves a lot of user research, such as conducting surveys, interviews, and observation sessions, so you can get a clear picture of who your users are and the challenges they are facing.

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