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Articles

Aurora Harley

Aurora Harley is a Senior User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. Aurora’s research and consulting experience includes organizations in a variety of industries, such as ecommerce, travel, healthcare, and B2B (business-to-business). She also conducts independent research for NN/g, and regularly leads training courses on mobile usability, UX strategies, psychology and UX, and analytics. 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.

@aurorararara

Articles and Videos

  • Individualized Recommendations: Users’ Expectations & Assumptions

    Users appreciate personalized content suggestions and are willing to give up some of their privacy for quality recommendations, while accepting some inaccurate recommendations.

  • Ideation Techniques for a One-Person UX Team

    Even a lone UX wolf can ideate design options, and structured ideation techniques help you explore the design space.

  • What Is a Mental Model?

    What users *think* they know about your system will determine how they interact with the design. Understand users' mental models to design something that'll work well in practice.

  • UX Guidelines for Ecommerce Homepages, Category Pages, and Product Listing Pages

    Streamline users’ path to products by providing clear, differentiating product information at all levels — from the homepage to product listing pages.

  • Visibility of System Status (Usability Heuristic #1)

    Communicating the current state allows users to feel in control of the system, take appropriate actions to reach their goal, and ultimately trust the brand.

  • Check Analytics Data Before You Wreck UX Priorities

    Analytics data can help supplement observations made during usability studies by providing evidence on the severity and generalizability of the issues observed.

  • Multivariate vs. A/B Testing: Incremental vs. Radical Changes

    Radical redesigns are best tested using an A/B experiment, while multivariate tests indicate how various UI elements interact with each other and support incremental improvements to a design.

  • Yes, Icons Need Text Labels

    Universal icons are rare. To help overcome the ambiguity that almost all icons face, a text label must be present alongside an icon to clarify its meaning.

  • UX Expert Reviews

    Expert reviews involve the analysis of a design by a UX expert with the goal of identifying usability problems and strengths.

  • Turning Analytics Findings Into Usability Studies

    Tips for translating UX issues found in analytics into user research. Analytics tell you what customers are doing, but not why they are doing it. Pairing analytics and user research will provide you with clearer answers.