Chris from UX Playbook ⚡️
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uxchrisnguyen.bsky.social
Chris from UX Playbook ⚡️
@uxchrisnguyen.bsky.social
61 followers 13 following 2.2K posts
I help UX designers go from Fuzziness to Focused to Freedom
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📌Starting tomorrow, for the entire November, I'm offering 50% off all products with code FRIYAY25:

1. Head to uxplaybook.org/shop
2. Use code: FRIYAY25
3. Enjoy the 50% OFF

Ends November 30th.
Or wait until 2026.
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1. What frustrates the hell out of you?
2. What solution would you personally use?
3. What feels like play but looks like work to others?

My answer: Making UX education digestible & fun.

That was my "thing."

What's yours?
The education industry is built around credentials, not outcomes.

But the internet changed all that.

Now you can learn from practitioners, not professors.

Here's my "find your thing" framework:
The funny thing? I'm not special.

I was just a Viet/Chinese immigrant kid who:

• Got kicked out of university at 21
• Scrubbed toilets to get out of debt
• Lived with my grandparents (broke AF)
• Found design by accident at 26

What's the lesson here?
Then I waited...

…crickets
…crickets intensify

Then... a sale.

From someone I didn't know.

Then another.
And another.

Fast forward to today:

→ 20M+ content impressions
→ 100k+ designers following my work
→ 20k+ designers using my systems (from 90+ countries)
What if I took the actual systems and frameworks I built as Head of Design... and turned them into practical playbooks for designers?

No BS theory.
No academia.
Just tools for the real world.

I threw together a scrappy website.
Slapped on a price tag.
Launched.
Scene 2: Me, jobless, in my underwear, building what would become UX Playbook

So what did I do?

I quit.
Mid-pandemic.
No backup plan.

My friends: "Dude, you having a breakdown?"
My mum: "Is this a quarter-life crisis?"
My bank account: sobbing noises

But I had a hypothesis…
→ $15k+ bootcamps teaching theory
→ $30k+ for university degrees
→ $2k+ for online courses

Graduates entering the industry completely unprepared.

It's like teaching someone to swim by making them read books about water.

The title.
The salary.
The status.

But I was miserable.

Why?

Because I'd realised something that kept me up at night:

UX education is completely broken.
Scene 1: Me sitting in my fancy Head of Design office, plotting my escape...

Year 2020.
Middle of a pandemic.
Earning 6-figures at a unicorn.

The dream job, right?

Narrator: It was not, in fact, the dream job.

I had everything I thought I wanted.
Why UX education is broken AF
(and what I did about it)
We don’t need fewer rejections.
We need sharper takeaways from each one.

Keep going until your YES.

💪



P.S. What's your rejection record?
Mine's 30. Let's normalise the struggle. 😎
Rejection never goes away.

But the sting gets smaller when I:

∗ Realised it comes with maturity
∗ Turned every “no” into motivation
∗ Accepted that it happens (and it’s just reality)

𝟰. 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆

Why does rejection feel unbearable?

→ I expected success without setbacks
→ I see rejection as failure, not feedback
→ I let “no” stop me instead of shaping me
When I do, I…

→ Prove I’m willing to grow
→ Show humility (rare for my early days)
→ See myself from new perspectives

Get a reply or not… I’m genuinely curious.

𝟯. 𝗔𝘀𝗸 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 (𝘀𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗹𝘆)

Why am I not improving?

→ I treated rejection as a dead end
→ I assumed I knew why they said no
→ I never hear how others see my work

The fix is simple: ASK
So I flipped it:

“On to the next one”
“It’s not the right time”
“There will always be more opportunities”

That’s progress. Not self-pity.

𝟮. 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗺𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀

Why should rejection keep me stuck?

→ I spiralled into victim mode
→ I replayed the “no” in your head
→ I convinced myself the system is broken

That mindset only drained my energy.
𝟭. 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀

Why am I not passing round 1?

→ The budget got cut
→ They already hired internally
→ The requirements changed overnight
→ Your portfolio didn't match their exact needs

It’s not about me.

That's business. Not personal.

Rejection hurt.
Rejection killed my confidence.
Rejection made me depressed.

Turns out…

I CAN control my reactions to rejections.

I stopped blaming "the market"
I started fixing what I could control.

4 lessons that got me out of my slump:
I didn’t just break into UX.

I got rejected 30 times before I got a yes.
...we are hugging and facing the camera (make the image the most similar as the original pic - don't change their face)

[Drop your cute pics here]