Today for our 76th episode, we will talk with Els Aerts, Co-founder of AGConsult, the best usability and CRO company in whole of Belgium

Now we haven’t talked much about usability on the podcast before, so today’s episode is going to be extra special, because you get to talk to a true expert. Els and I met earlier this year in Estonia, and I couldn’t wait to ask her a bunch of dumb questions about usability.

My first introduction to usability was somewhere around 2006, when I read the book Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. But Els was on the usability track well before then. She has been evaluating and improving poor user experiences for 15 years.

It’s obvious that Els knows a lot about the topic, to the point that she has developed an outstanding back catalog of test results, presentations and writings about usability.

Els is like Liam Neeson in Taken. She has a very particular set of skills. Just don’t ask her about whether you should use the data you collect to form personas. It may cause the interview to get a little tense. Thankfully, I survived.

Quotable moments from our talk with Els Aerts

On client relationships:

On focus groups:

On personas:

Links related to this week’s episode

• Els Aerts on LinkedIn
• @els_aerts on Twitter
• Els’s profile on her company website
• Product Overview Do’s and Don’ts
• Els’s Tool #1: OptimalSort
• Els’s Tool #2: Treejack
• Els’s Tool #3: Five Second Test
• Els’s Tool #4: Usability test with Morae
• Els’s usability and user research hero #1: Jacob Nielsen
• Els’s usability and user research hero #2: Gerry McGovern
• A Book by Els’s usability and user research hero #3: Erika Hall – Just Enough Research

Did you like this episode? Listen to past episodes on SoundCloud!

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