To improve conversion (i.e., get more people to finish your flow), think about everything you request from the user like a cost. Every question is a cost. Every minute is a cost
Recently, I heard that Coursera has a UX design course developed by Google’s design team. This course covers the entire design process and teaches us how to present our portfolio, prepare interviews, and the like.
It is necessary to enroll in this course even though it is designed primarily for beginners and fresh graduates. It would enhance my English skills on one hand, and deepen my understanding of Western design practices and culture on the other. Since the term “UX design” is called out by Western designers and I am eager to compare Western design cultures with those I’ve experienced in China.
So I enrolled in this online course, trying to spare my time on it. Such as during lunch and dinner breaks on weekdays, or parts of the weekend. I completed the whole certificate within two months. And now I’d like to write down what I learned from this course:
Introducing concepts I had never heard of. Despite my 5+ yoe in a wide range of companies, from startups to large corporations in China, those new concepts opened up a lot of room for me to explore.
Enhancing my listening and reading skills. The course covers plenty of video and reading materials that include industry jargon that translators cannot provide. Moreover, certain phrases and sentence structures are repeatedly used throughout the course. I think my reading skills and speed are slightly improved.
Pointing out concepts like accessibility and equity early throughout the course. I used to think only seasoned designers or well-developed products consider these aspects, however, they are mentioned early on and repeatedly. These concepts resonated with me and will truly influence my work.
Elaborating comprehensive and detailed guidance for designers to prepare their portfolios, resumes, and interviews. They not only tell us what content should be included in our portfolios, but also how to prepare for interviews at different stages. I resonated with these instructions as well, since I did think those details over when looking for a new job.
I have consistently tried to think about and expand design boundaries through different aspects, which requires a breadth of knowledge. Here, I will share several new concepts along with my personal understanding.
Affinity diagram
This is a method of synthesizing that organizes data into groups with common themes or relationships. It can be used in different stages of the design process, such as during brainstorming or after collecting users feedback. The example below focuses on the latter.
After collecting a batch of user feedback, the design team condense each piece of feedback into a single sentence and write it on sticky notes. Then we post them up on a whiteboard or digital tools like Figma. Then the design team look for sticky notes that reference similar ideas, issues, or functionality and collaboratively organizes them into clusters representing different themes.
When I first learned about this approach in the course, I realized that this approach is similar to another method called “Card sorting” that was included in an article I translated earlier named [English to Chinese Translation] How we rebuilt Shopify’s developer docs. Both methods involve clustering sticky notes, naming these groups and summarizing the themes or relationships.
However, card sorting is implemented by external participants and aims to uncover users’ mental models to improve information architecture; Whereas affinity diagramming organizes a large amount of raw data to show the team which problems users are most concerned about and consider high priority.
This concept refers to an individual’s ability to gather, communicate, and create content using digital products and the internet. For example, senior adults or those living in areas with poor internet infrastructure may find it difficult to understand interfaces and functionalities, they are considered to have lower digital literacy.
In contrast, young people, especially those working in the information technology industries, are typically familiar with new software and concepts, and can quickly adapt to them.
This course does not dig deeply into this concept, rather, it emphasizes the importance of understanding our users. If our product targets a broad range of users, it is good to consider the needs of users with lower digital literacy. Moreover, this factor should also be considered when recruiting participants for usability tests.
This concept refers to a group of UX methods that trick users into doing or buying something they wouldn’t otherwise have done or bought.
In the course, instructors clearly point out that this is an unethical and not a good practice. Businesses may lose their clients’ respect and trust once clients realize that they have fallen into deceptive patterns. I will share a few interesting examples that the course provided.
Confirmshaming: Making users feel ashamed of their decision. For example, a subscribe button on a news website usually reads “Subscribe now / No thanks”. BBut if the service provider wants to manipulate readers’ emotions, the text might be changed to: “Subscribe now / No, I don’t care about things around me.”
Urgency: Pushing users to make a decision within a limited time. For example, an e-commerce website might give you a coupon that is only available for 24 hours, prompting you to purchase items without a thoughtful consideration. The course doesn’t judge these marketing strategies or promotions; instead, it suggests that we should avoid putting pressure on users. As designers, we should try our best to balance business promotions and avoid manipulating users’ emotions.
Scarcity: Making users very aware of the limited number of items. For example, a popup or attractive advertisement stating “Only 5 items left in stock.” The course suggests that designers should concentrate on helping users to understand products better, rather than using designs to encourage impulsive buying.
It is really interesting that these deceptive patterns are so common in the Chinese e-commerce industry that it might seem unusual if those strategies were to disappear.
This seems to reflect cultural differences between China and the West. In China, core team members, such as designers, product managers, and operators, collaboratively discuss how to induce and prompt users to make a hasty decision. Also, we regularly hold reflections to discuss and share insights on how to deeply incite users’ motivation.
In 2018, I landed my first job as a UI designer at an e-commerce company. One of my main tasks is designing promotions, such as “claim your vouchers”, “flash sales ending in N hours”, and creating illustrations of red pockets and flying coins, and the like. I didn’t really like these approaches at that time, so I eventually turned to the B2B and SaaS industry, focusing more on UX design.
Although I am not fond of these types of designs, these seem to really help companies grow and generate income. We could stabilize our employment only if our company were earning profits. Perhaps that is an inextricable cycle: obviously, deceptive patterns are unethical and bad as they are inducing and annoying our users, but we must continuously implement these approaches and think about how to make them more effective.
The course thoroughly explains a concept called “implicit bias”. It refers to the collection of attitudes and stereotypes associated, influencing our understanding of and decisions for a specific group of people.
For example, imagine you’re designing an app to help parents buy childcare. To personalize your onboarding process, you start by displaying bold text saying, “Welcome, moms. We’re here to help you…”
This is an example of implicit bias, since it excludes every other type of caregiver, like grandparents, guardians, dads and others.
In addition, here are some interesting biases the course introduced:
Confirmation bias. Refers to the tendency to find evidence that supports people’s assumptions when gathering and analyzing information.
Friendliness bias. Refers to the tendency to give more desirable answers or positive comments in order to please interviewers. This usually occurs in usability tests, where participants may not share their honest feedback because they are afraid that real answers or negative comments might offend interviewers and be considered unfriendly.
False-consensus bias. Refers to the tendency that people tend to believe that their personal views or behaviors are more widely accepted than they actually are, and consider others’ opinions to be minor or marginal. For example, an optimist might think that most people around the world are optimistic; or designers can easily understand iconographies and illustrations they created, they might assume other users might easily to understand too.
I was shocked when I was learning this part. I strongly resonated with these biases which I had never perceived before. After all, the course lets us be aware of these biases and provides approaches to help us avoid falling into these pitfalls.
I listed some concepts above that I had barely encountered in my workspace. Becoming a UX designer appears to require a broad range of knowledge, such as design, the humanities, psychology, and sociology. I am now interested in psychology after completing this course.
Listening and Reading Proficiency
There are plenty of listening and reading materials involved in the course. Typically, each video lesson is accompanied by an article. If there are additional knowledge points, a single video might be accompanied by two or three articles.
Most instructors in the course speak with American accents. They also speak slowly and clearly, which makes me comfortable and usually allows me to understand without opening closed caption. Sometimes, I need to rewind a few seconds when they are speaking long sentences with many clauses or introducing new concepts, and I will open closed captions if I am still confused.
It is worth pointing out that the course contains lots of industry jargon, and I resonated with this because I used similar approaches or processes in my workspace by using Chinese. As a learner, I created a spreadsheet to record expressions that might be useful, such as:
Above the fold, the content on a web page that doesn’t require scrolling to experience;
Deliverable, final products like mockups or documents that can be handed over to clients or developers to bring designs to life.
Digital real estate, space within the digital interface where designers can arrange visual elements;
Firm parameters, refer to rigid design boundaries or limitations like time, project resources, and budget.
I think it is valuable to collect this industry jargon because it is authentically expressed, which can’t be translated by common translation tools. This will be helpful for me to read design articles and write blogs in English.
Accessibility and Equity
Accessibility
The course introduces several assistive technologies, such as color modification, voice control, switch devices, and screen readers, which can help people with different types of disabilities to use our products easily.
Instructors also point out that even people who don’t have disabilities, or who do not perceive themselves as having disabilities might benefit from these assistive technologies. The course suggests that we think these factors over throughout the entire design process. For instance:
Supporting color modification. Features that increase the contrast of colors on a screen, like high-contrast mode or dark mode;
Supporting voice control. Allows users to navigate and interact with the elements on their devices using only their voice. They also mention a concept called “Voice User Interface (VUI)”;
Supporting switch devices. This is a one-button device that functions as an alternative to conventional input methods such as the keyboard, mouse, and touch, allowing users to complete common tasks like browsing webpages and typing text;
Supporting screen readers. Allows users with vision impairment to perceive the content. The course suggests that we write alternative text to images, add appropriate aria labels to interactive elements like buttons, and consider the focus order of elements.
Here is a website that demonstrates the color modification feature:HubSpot.com
On the top navigation of this website, it provides a switch for us to toggle a high-contrast mode. Moreover, it also supports reduced motion effects — if I enable the reduced motion setting on my device, this website will minimize motion effects as much as possible.
Equity
The course also introduces a concept called “equity-focused design.”
Instructors clearly define the difference between “equality” and “equity”:
Equality: Providing the same amount of opportunity and support, everyone receives the same thing;
Equity: Providing different amount of opportunity and support according to individual circumstances, ensuring everyone can achieve the same outcomes.
The course also points out that equity-focused design means considering all races, genders, and abilities, especially focusing on groups that have been historically underrepresented or ignored when building products.
They use a survey question as an example: when gathering participants’ demographic information like gender, it is not enough to provide three options: “Male”, “Female” and “Other”. To make our design more inclusive and equitable, we should offer additional choices, including “Male”, “Female”, “Gender-nonconforming”, “nonbinary” and a blank field. The latter provides non-conventional gender options, uplifting those who might be marginalized in conventional surveys. This approach also aims to balance the opportunities for all groups to express themselves, ensuring their voices are treated fairly and heard.
In this lesson, I clearly faced a culture gap from the West. In fact, I don’t really like to dig into this concept deeply, mainly because I can’t determine whether this approach is right. Sometimes I think it is unnecessarily complicated, but at other times, I recognize that there are people with non-traditional genders around us who may truly be eager to be treated fairly.
When I was learning this lesson, I realized that there was an opportunity to incorporate accessibility features into the project I was recently working on. I will write a new post if this project lands successfully.
In the final course, instructors teach us how to lay out a portfolio and what content should be included. They also inform us the process of interviews and how to thoroughly prepare for interviews.
The guidance they mentioned is for the Western workplace, which may not seamlessly fit in the Chinese workplace. For example:
They point out that designers should have a personal website and case studies regularly. However, Chinese designers prefer to publish their case studies on public platforms like ZCOOL and UI.CN;
They also teach us how to build our digital presence and network through LinkedIn. However, these approaches are not common in the Chinese job market, where the most popular methods are directly submitting resumes and getting recommendations through acquaintances.
They inform us how to handle panel interviews. I have interviewed with a wide range of companies, from startups to corporations, and never encountered panel interviews, which means that the panel interview is not popular in this industry.
I was deeply impressed by how they elaborated on the preparation and important considerations during the interview process. For example:
Research the main business of the company you interview for beforehand, and clearly understand why you are a good fit for the company;
Prepare answers to common interview questions beforehand, such as a personal introduction, your strengths, and descriptions of your case studies;
We should learn how to answer difficult questions using the STAR method, and prepare well before starting an interview;
Adapt the focus and questions according to the interviewer’s role to show you are a professional;
During the interview process, you might be asked to complete a task. Therefore, we should practice the ability to think aloud and clearly define questions, since interviewers might pose vague questions on purpose.
I resonated with the approaches and tricks mentioned in the course that I had previously used, which gave me a strong feeling that I was on the right track.
Additionally, the course also provides detailed instructions on how to pursue freelance design work. For instance:
Clearly identify your target audience and understand why they should choose your service;
Know your competitors, identifying what they can’t provide but you can;
Promote your service and build word-of-mouth by attending online and in-person events, and getting recommended through acquaintances;
Calculate the business expenses, set fair prices for your services, and make financial projections — estimate what your finances will look like in the first month, the first 6 months, and the first year.
Well, above are lessons I’ve learned from the Google UX Design Professional Certificate on Coursera over the past two months. I think that this is an interesting course, although not all content can be applied in my daily work, I’ve also learned the thinking processes and workplace cultures of designers in another part of the world.
I strongly recommend designers reading this post consider to enrolling in the Google UX Design Professional Certificate, by doing this, you might probably gain new insights. The course costs $49 monthly, which is not expensive. It is likely to complete the entire course over two or three months if you have a full-time job.
Things worked as I expected, and I will start my next project in the second half of the year.
这是我见过的设计非常好看的一个网站：Kali Linux，无论在布局还是色彩、视觉效果上都给人美的感受。下面截图是桌面版的白色版、暗夜版。由于手机上截图的限制，暂时没有找到截取完整网页的办法。提醒：图片是一张完整的长图（分辨率：2560*19066），并没有做切片处理，因此加载、显示过程可能较为缓慢。1、Kali Linux 白色版2、Kali Linux 暗夜版
Asus Z370-I是一块ITX主板，只有两个内存插槽，装机的时候切好碰上DDR4内存天价，所以很长一段时间里只有双通道16GB 3000MHz，这块主板在官网上参数写着最大支持32GB内存，也就是2X16GB，然而随着内存降价，发现23年单条32GB的内存已经很便宜了，想着直接上到双通道64GB，以后这台机器退役也能当服务器用
“18年底的BIOS还是8000，19年4月的BIOS就是0001了”的这一行去掉发生3004（更新日志：主要是添加了Win11的支持，没有提内存上线变化）,我找了M10H ROG MAXIMUS X HERO BIOS变更日志中有内存上限修改(Support Max DRAM Total Capacity up to 128 GB.)的新老BIOS看了下，也是去掉了8000这一行
3.1X的内核可能存在qbt启动异常的问题，/usr/bin/qbittorrent-nox: error while loading shared libraries: libQt5Core.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory参考群晖
root@K2P:~# ip r
default metric 1
nexthop via 10.170.72.254 dev pppoe-VWAN21 weight 1
nexthop via 10.170.72.254 dev pppoe-VWAN22 weight 1
nexthop via 10.170.72.254 dev pppoe-VWAN31 weight 1
nexthop via 10.170.72.254 dev pppoe-VWAN32 weight 1
root@K2P:~# ip -6 r default
default metric 1
nexthop via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN21 weight 1
nexthop via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN22 weight 1
nexthop via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN31 weight 1
nexthop via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN32 weight 1 pref medium
Existing Multipath Routing implementation in Linux is designed to distribute flows of packets over multiple paths, not individual packets. Selecting route in a per-packet manner does not play well with TCP, IP fragments, or Path MTU Discovery.
ip rule add table 916
ip route add 10.173.0.0/16 via 10.170.72.254 dev pppoe-VWAN31 table 916
ip route add 10.170.0.0/16 via 10.170.72.254 dev pppoe-VWAN32 table 916
ip route add ${addresss}/${mask} nexthop via ${gateway 1} weight ${number} nexthop via ${gateway 2} weight ${number}
Multipath routes make the system balance packets across several links according to the weight (higher weight is preferred, so gateway/interface with weight of 2 will get roughly two times more traffic than another one with weight of 1). You can have as many gateways as you want and mix gateway and interface routes, like:
ip route add default nexthop via 192.168.1.1 weight 1 nexthop dev ppp0 weight 10
Warning: the downside of this type of balancing is that packets are not guaranteed to be sent back through the same link they came in. This is called “asymmetric routing”. For routers that simply forward packets and don’t do any local traffic processing such as NAT, this is usually normal, and in some cases even unavoidable.
If your system does anything but forwarding packets between interfaces, this may cause problems with incoming connections and some measures should be taken to prevent it.
可以补充的是如果用的多个等带宽的PPPoE Interface的话，可以使用多个nexthop dev ${pppoe-dev}
fib_multipath_hash_policy - INTEGER
Controls which hash policy to use for multipath routes. Only valid for kernels built with CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_MULTIPATH enabled.
Default: 0 (Layer 3)
Possible values:
0 - Layer 3
1 - Layer 4
2 - Layer 3 or inner Layer 3 if present
fib_multipath_use_neigh - BOOLEAN
Use status of existing neighbor entry when determining nexthop for multipath routes. If disabled, neighbor information is not used and packets could be directed to a failed nexthop. Only valid for kernels built with CONFIG_IP_ROUTE_MULTIPATH enabled.
Default: 0 (disabled)
Possible values:
0 - disabled
1 - enabled
for i in`seq 1 2`do
ip link add link eth0.2 name veth$itype macvlan
done
拨号
还是用脚本省事，填上用户名和密码即可，拨数为2，填下账号密码
#!/bin/shusername=password=for i in`seq 1 2`do
uci set network.VWAN$i=interface
uci set network.VWAN$i.proto='pppoe'
uci set network.VWAN$i.username="$username"
uci set network.VWAN$i.password="$password"
uci set network.VWAN$i.metric="$((i+1))"
uci set network.VWAN$i.ifname="veth$i"
uci set network.VWAN$i.ipv6='1'done
uci commit network
添加所有PPPoE接口到wan zone（担心影响到其他的网络环境的话手动也可以）
for i in`uci show network | grep pppoe | awk-F.'{print $2}'`do
uci add_list firewall.@zone[2].network=$idone
uci commit firewall
添加ECMP路由
只用nexthop dev ${pppoe-dev}:
#IPv4
ip route replace default metric 1 nexthop dev pppoe-VWAN1 nexthop dev pppoe-VWAN2
#IPv6
ip -6 route replace default metric 1 nexthop dev pppoe-VWAN1 nexthop dev pppoe-VWAN2
root@OpenWrt:~# ip -6 route | grep pppoe
default from 2001:250:1006:dff0::/64 via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN4 proto static metric 512 pref medium
2000:::/3 dev pppoe-VWAN4 proto static metric 256 pref medium
nexthop via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-wan weight 1
nexthop via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN2 weight 1
nexthop via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN3 weight 1
nexthop via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN4 weight 1
default from 2001:250:1006:dff0::/64 via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN3 proto static metric 512 pref medium
2001:250:1006:dff0::/64 dev pppoe-VWAN3 proto static metric 256 pref medium
...
之后通过下面两条常规的添加路由表条目的命令：
route -A inet6 add 2000::/3 gw fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN2
route -A inet6 add 2000::/3 gw fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN3
发现路由表就出现了nexthup和负载均衡中的weight标记
root@OpenWrt:~# ip -6 route | grep pppoe
default from 2001:250:1006:dff0::/64 via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN3 proto static metric 512 pref medium
2000::/3 dev pppoe-VWAN3 proto static metric 256 pref medium
nexthop via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN2 weight 1
nexthop via fe80::96db:daff:fe3e:8fcf dev pppoe-VWAN3 weight 1
...
Connecting and expanding commands
A truly powerful feature of the shell is the capability to redirect the input and output of commands to and from other commands and files. To allow commands to be strung together,the shell uses metacharacters. As noted earlier, a metacharacter is a typed character that has special meaning to the shell for connecting commands or requesting expansion.
Piping commands
The pipe (|) metacharacter connects the output from one command to the input of another command. This lets you have one command work on some data, and then have the next command deal with the results. Here is an example of a command line that includes pipes:
$ cat /etc/passwd | sort | cut -f1,5 -d: | less
This command lists the contents of the /etc/passwd file and pipes the output to the sort command. The sort command takes the user names that begin each line of the /etc/passwd file, sorts them alphabetically, and pipes the output to the cut command. The cut command takes fields 1 and 5, with the fields delimited by a colon (:), then pipes the output to the less command. The less command displays the output one page at a time, so that you can go through page by page.
Using file-matching metacharacters
To save you some keystrokes and to be able to refer easily to a group of files, the bash shell lets you use metacharacters. Anytime you need to refer to a file or directory, such as to list it, open it, or remove it, you can use metacharacters to match the files you want. Here are some useful metacharacters for matching filenames:
• * — This matches any number of characters.
• ? — This matches any one character.
• [...] — This matches any one of the characters between the brackets, which can
include a dash-separated range of letters or numbers.
Sample Examples:
Using file-redirection metacharacters
Commands receive data from standard input and send it to standard output. Standard input is normally user input from the keyboard, and standard output is normally displayed on the screen. Using pipes (described earlier), you can direct standard output from one command to the standard input of another. With files, you can use less than (<) and greater than (>) signs to direct data to and from files. Here are the file redirection characters:
• < — Direct the contents of a file as input to the command (because many commands take a file name as an option, the < key is not usually needed).
• > — Direct the output of a command to a file, overwriting any existing file.
• >> — Direct the output of a command to a file, adding the output to the end of the existing file.
Here are some examples of command lines where information is directed to and from files.
Managing background and foreground processes
If you are using Linux over a network or from a dumb terminal (a monitor that allows only text input with no GUI support), your shell may be all that you have. You may be used to a windowing environment where you have a lot of programs active at the same time so that you can switch among them as needed. This shell thing can seem pretty limited.
There are several ways to place an active program in the background. One mentioned earlier is to add an ampersand (&) to the end of a command line. Another way is to use the at command to run commands in a way in which they are not connected to the shell. (See Chapter 12 for more information about the at command.)
To stop a running command and put it in the background, press Ctrl+z. After the command is stopped, you can either bring it to the foreground to run (the fg command) or start it running in the background (the bg command).
# ls -l drwxrwxrwx 2 sam adm 4096 10月 30 20:14 file6 -rwxrwxrwx 2 sam adm 0 10月 31 01:01 http3.conf -rwxrwxrwx 2 sam adm 0 10月 31 01:01 httpd.conf
# find . -perm -7 -print | xargs chmod o-w # ls -l drwxrwxr-x 2 sam adm 4096 10月 30 20:14 file6 -rwxrwxr-x 2 sam adm 0 10月 31 01:01 http3.conf -rwxrwxr-x 2 sam adm 0 10月 31 01:01 httpd.conf
用grep命令在所有的普通文件中搜索hostname这个词：
# find . -type f -print | xargs grep "hostname" ./httpd1.conf:# different IP addresses or hostnames and have them handled by the ./httpd1.conf:# VirtualHost: If you want to maintain multiple domains/hostnames on your
用grep命令在当前目录下的所有普通文件中搜索hostnames这个词：
# find . -name \* -type f -print | xargs grep "hostnames" ./httpd1.conf:# different IP addresses or hostnames and have them handled by the ./httpd1.conf:# VirtualHost: If you want to maintain multiple domains/hostnames on your
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