Aaron is Director of Operations and co-founder of EchoUser. Aaron specializes in best practice usability and user-centered design methods. He is an expert in advanced user testing utilizing techniques for rapid iterative testing, robust benchmarking, and expectation analysis. In all projects Aaron seeks to harness the power and knowledge inherent in users to improve experiences, whether it be a software experience, transportation experience, or any other experiences induced by products and services.

Career

• Usability Testing and Project Management: Aaron has nearly ten years of experience usability testing products, services, and websites. User feedback is a critical element in design and improving the user experience. Each usability project has its own unique problems and questions to be answered. Aaron's extensive knowledge and experience with usability methodologies enables him to work with teams to integrate the best usability practices and techniques to suit a particular project's needs. Whether it be iterative usability testing, usability benchmarking, contextual inquiries, or heuristic analysis, a user experience method can be implemented so the voice of the user influences the design and experience.
• Usability Expectations: Expectations of experiences greatly impacts the satisfaction of users. Exceeding user expectations highlights good design while coming up short to user expectations helps identify areas for improvement. This important construct is often overlooked in user experience testing.  Aaron has developed methodologies that incorporate expectations into the usability testing process that helps to prioritize development issues.
• Benchmarking Systems: A usability benchmarking system provides an enterprise standard for applications to be compared against. Aaron has implemented usability benchmarking systems for clients that are used by management to assess the state of usability for their products. This is accomplished through the evangelism of user experience and utilizing cross functional teams to give all stakeholders involvement and transparency in the process.
• Contextual Inquiries: The context that surrounds user tasks plays a big role in the user experience and is often difficult to get at through traditional testing other than through anecdotal feedback. Aaron conducts both large and small contextual inquiries to observe users in their natural environments while using products and services. This typically provides feedback and insights into how to best design for real world environments.

Publications

• Rich, A. (2005). Innovation in the Usability Workplace: Conducting Research in an Industrial Setting. AIS SIGHCI Newsletter. Vol. 4(2), 6-7.
• Rich, A., McGee, M. (2004). Expected Usability Magnitude Estimation. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 912-916.
• McGee, M., Rich, A., Dumas, J. (2004). Understanding the Usability Construct: User-Perceived Usability. Proceedings Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 907-911.
• Wiegmann, D. A., Rich, A., Overbye, T. J., and Sun, Y. (2002). Human Factors Aspects of Power System Voltage Visualizations. Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Kona, HI
• Wiegmann, D. A., Essenberg, G. R., Overbye, T. J., Rich, A. M. (2002) Motion in Mimic Displays: Effects on the Detection and Diagnosis of Electrical Power System Failures. Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
• Rich, A. M., Wiegmann, D. A., Overbye, T. J. (2001) Usability Evaluation of Power System Visualization Software. University of Illinois Aviation Research Lab Technical Report ARL-01-03/NSF-01-1
• Rich, A. M., Wiegmann, D. A., Overbye, T. J. (2001) Visualization of Power Systems Data: A Human Factors Analysis. University of Illinois Aviation Research Lab Technical Report ARL-01-05/PSERC-01-1
• Wiegmann, D. A., Rich, A., and Zhang, H. (2001). Automated Diagnostic Aids: The Effects of Aid Reliability on Users’ Trust and Reliance.  Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 2(4), 352-367.