Aurora Harley’s research and consulting experience includes organizations in a variety of industries, such as ecommerce, travel, healthcare, and B2B (business-to-business). Aurora combines her background in front-end web development and UX design to inform her work, creating effective designs that balance technical, business, and user needs.
User errors while using computers take two forms: slips (right intent, wrong action) and mistakes (wrong intent). Understanding the differences between the types of user error will help you design to prevent or minimize these problems.
It's important to study why users leave websites. Analytics tools give you two metrics for web pages: exit rate and bounce rate. Understanding the difference between these two numbers is essential for better UX design.
Consider how your audience will be using the visuals to determine the optimal camera angle, set the right tone, choose the right props, and maintain attention.
Instructional video content is helpful as supplementary information, though not all users will watch it. Videos should be easily discoverable, consistent in style across the site, and with thumbnails that accurately represent the type of content they provide.
Analytics for websites or other UX design projects should drive the project forward to better business success. Metrics that make you feel good may not achieve this goal.
Ideation in the UX design process can be conducted remotely: without having team members in the same room. This can be done synchronously (everybody participates at the same time) or asynchronously (people contribute at different times).
In testing, we often see users who don't scroll a web page even though there is much useful info below the fold. Often, the reason is "the illusion of completeness" which causes users to believe that they are seeing all there is.
Negative experiences have stronger emotional impact on humans than positive experiences do. Thus, in designing the user experience, we need extra emphasis on avoiding those lows.
Tracked analytics metrics should be actionable: variations in a meaningful, relatively stable metric reflect change in the user experience. In contrast, vanity metrics appear impressive, but their fluctuations are not operational.
It's not just users who are subject to illogical thinking: designers and UX professionals can also make sub-optimal design decisions by falling prey to the same decision biases, such as framing effects when analyzing usability data.
