Pivots & Passion — Stories to Change the World

A Candid Conversation with Els Aerts

“The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists. (…) The starting point is curiosity: pondering why the default exists in the first place. We’re driven to question defaults when we experience vuja de, the opposite of déjà vu. Déjà vu occurs when we encounter something new, but it feels as if we’ve seen it before. Vuja de is the reverse—we face something familiar, but we see it with a fresh perspective that enables us to gain new insights into old problems.” — Adam Grant, “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World”

That’s the essence of this new series. We’re chasing that ‘vuja de’ moment — when someone looks at a best practice and goes, “Why do we even do it this way?”

Spotlighting unconventional thinkers who are reframing the way our industry approaches protocols and ideas. Folks who aren’t afraid to poke holes in mainstream theories and reject defaults.

Come along for the ride?

Els — tell us about your background. Where are you from and what are you passionate about?

How long have you got? I’ve been around for a long time. 🙂

I started as a web editor for a movie website in the late 1990s, right after I finished my studies at Antwerp University. The web was still pretty new back then.

I got into usability and UX research when I co-founded my company AGConsult with my business partner Karl Gilis in 2001.

In essence, I feel that, all these years later, that’s what I still do today: figuring out how I can make customers happier and businesses more successful.

I’m passionate about user research.

It’s just so damn interesting.

Good user research really gives you insight into what makes people tick. What’s important to them? What doesn’t resonate at all? And why is that?

Every person has a pet peeve. Every industry has something to change. What would you like to change about the space that you work in?

I’m allergic to bad research.

Running shit surveys. The amount of bad surveys out there is just absolutely appalling.

Doing user testing with colleagues when they’re not your target audience and calling them ‘proxy users’ is another thing that really irks me.

Or, heaven forbid, user testing with fake users aka AI.

There’s nothing wrong with using AI in research. It can speed up the process immensely.
But you should know when and how to use it. And replacing real living and breathing users as user test participants is not what it’s for.

If you’re gonna do research, do it properly.

The thing is, to the untrained eye, bad research is very hard to spot. I like to compare research to mushrooms. If you’re not an expert, it’s really easy to mistake a poisonous mushroom for a perfectly edible one.

And while bad research can’t actually kill you like a bad mushroom can, it can lead you to gather unreliable data. Which can lead to bad decisions….

Which is why my conference talks are usually about how to avoid bad research practices and how to get research right dammit.

(Rant over.)

How do you experiment & grow in your work?

I guess the key to growing as a researcher and an optimizer is to always stay curious.

To always think: what would happen if we did it like this? How can we make this even better?

Our team at AGConsult is always thinking about ways to innovate and to optimize our processes and the methods we use for our research and optimization work. I like to think my teammates learn from me and I learn from them.

While I firmly believe the fundamentals of UX and user research haven’t changed, I feel it’s important to explore new methods and tools. Not because new automatically means better. It absolutely doesn’t. But you do have to be knowledgeable about what’s out there so you can make the best choices for your projects and your customers.

I also consider myself very lucky to be able to reach out to a lot of the other experienced people in our industry to get their take on things.

I could name-drop a bunch of them but I’m not gonna do that. There’s simply too many.
You know who you are, golden oldies. I appreciate you. Cheers! 😀

Want more of Els’s unconventional insights? Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Know someone who’d be perfect for this series? We’d love to hear about them! Reach out to our editor Carmen on LinkedIn with your recommendations.