At Optimal Workshop, we're dedicated to building the best user research platform to empower you with the tools to better understand your customers and create intuitive digital experiences. We're thrilled to announce some game-changing updates and new products that are on the horizon to help elevate the way you gather insights and keep customers at the heart of everything you do.
What’s new…
Integration with Figma 🚀
Last month, we joined forces with design powerhouse Figma to launch our integration. You can import images from Figma into Chalkmark (our click-testing tool) in just a few clicks, streamlining your workflows and getting insights to make decisions based on data not hunches and opinions.
What’s coming next…
Session Replays 🧑💻
With session replay you can focus on other tasks while Optimal Workshop automatically captures card sort sessions for you to watch in your own time. Gain valuable insights into how participants engage and interpret a card sort without the hassle of running moderated sessions. The first iteration of session replays captures the study interactions, and will not include audio or face recording, but this is something we are exploring for future iterations. Session replays will be available in tree testing and click-testing later in 2024.
Reframer Transcripts 🔍
Say goodbye to juggling note-taking and hello to more efficient ways of working with Transcripts! We're continuing to add more capability to Reframer, our qualitative research tool, to now include the importing of interview transcripts. Save time, reduce human errors and oversights by importing transcripts, tagging and analyzing observations all within Reframer. We’re committed to build on transcripts with video and audio transcription capability in the future, we’ll keep you in the loop and when to expect those releases.
Prototype testing 🧪
The team is fizzing to be working on a new Prototype testing product designed to expand your research methods and help test prototypes easily from the Optimal Workshop platform. Testing prototypes early and often is an important step in the design process, saving you time and money before you invest too heavily in the build. We are working with customers and on delivering the first iteration of this exciting new product. Stay tuned for Prototypes coming in the second quarter of 2024.
Workspaces 🎉
Making Optimal Workshop easier for large organizations to manage teams and collaborate more effectively on projects is a big focus for 2024. Workspaces are the first step towards empowering organizations to better manage multiple teams with projects. Projects will allow greater flexibility on who can see what, encouraging working in the open and collaboration alongside the ability to make projects private. The privacy feature is available on Enterprise plans.
Questions upgrade❓
Our survey product Questions is in for a glow up in 2024 💅. The team are enjoying working with customers, collecting and reviewing feedback on how to improve Questions and will be sharing more on this in the coming months.
Help us build a better Optimal Workshop
We are looking for new customers to join our research panel to help influence product development. From time to time, you’ll be invited to join us for interviews or surveys, and you’ll be rewarded for your time with a thank-you gift. If you’d like to join the team, email product@optimalworkshop.com
We’re undergoing a huge transformation in 2024 to deliver more value for our customers with exciting new products like prototype testing, features like video recording, upgrading our survey tool, introducing AI, and improving how we support large organizations and multiple teams managing their accounts. These new products and features mean we need to update our pricing plans to continue innovating and providing top-tier UX research tools for our customers now and in the future.
Say hello to our new pricing plans 👋🏽
Starting July 22, 2024, we’ll be introducing new plans—Individual and Individual+—and updating our Team and Enterprise plans. We’ve reduced the price to join Optimal from $249 a month on the Pro plan to $129 on the new Individual plan. This reduction will help make our tools more accessible for people to do research and includes two months free on the individual annual plan, too.
We’ll be discontinuing some of our current plans, including Starter, Pro, and Pay per Study, and letting customers know about the changes that will affect their account via email and in information on the plans page in the app.
Prototype testing is just around the corner 🛣️ 🥳
The newest edition to the Optimal platform is days away, and will be available to use on the Individual+, Team and Enterprise plans from early August. Prototype testing will allow you to quickly test designs with users throughout the design process, to help inform decisions so you can build on with confidence. You’ll be able to build your own prototype from scratch using images or screenshots or import a prototype directly from Figma. Keep an eye out in app for this new exciting addition.
If you missed our recent live training on Prototype Testing, don’t worry—we’ve got everything you need right here! You can catch up at your convenience, so grab a cup of tea, put your feet up, and enjoy the show.
In the session, we explored the powerful new features of our Prototype Testing tool, offering a step-by-step guide to setting up, running, and analyzing your tests like a seasoned pro. This tool is a game-changer for your design workflow, helping you identify usability issues and gather real user feedback before committing significant resources to development.
Here’s a quick recap of the highlights:
1. Creating a prototype test from scratch using images
We walked through how to create a prototype test from scratch using static images. This method is perfect for early-stage design concepts, where you want to quickly test user flows without a fully interactive prototype.
2. Preparing your Figma prototype for testing
Figma users, we’ve got you covered! We discussed how to prepare your Figma prototype for the smoothest possible testing experience. From setting up interactions to ensuring proper navigation, these tips ensure participants have an intuitive experience during the test. For more detailed instructions, check out our help article
3. Seamless Figma prototype imports
One of the standout features of the tool is its seamless integration with Figma. We showed how easy it is to import your designs directly from Figma into Optimal, streamlining the setup process. You can bring your working files straight in, and resync when you need to with one click of a button.
4. Understanding usability metrics and analyzing results
We explored how to analyze the usability metrics, and walked through what the results can indicate on click maps and paths. These visual tools allow you to see exactly how participants navigate your design, making it easier to spot pain points, dead ends, or areas of friction. By understanding user behavior, you can rapidly iterate and refine your prototypes for optimal user experience.
Today, we’re thrilled to announce the arrival of the latest member of the Optimal family: Prototype Testing! This exciting and much-requested new tool allows you to test designs early and often with users to gather fast insights, and make confident design decisions to create more intuitive and user-friendly digital experiences.
Optimal gives you tools you need to easily build a prototype to test using images and screens and creating clickable areas, or you can import a prototype from Figma and get testing. The first iteration of prototype testing is an open beta, and we’ll be working closely with our customers and community to gather feedback and ideas for further improvements in the months to come.
When to use prototype testing
Prototype testing is a great way to validate design ideas, identify usability issues, and gather feedback from users before investing too heavily in the development of products, websites, and apps. To further inform your insights, it’s a good idea to include sentiment questions or rating scales alongside your tasks.
Early in the design process: Test initial ideas and concepts to gauge user reactions and feelings about your conceptual solutions.
Iterative design phases: Continuously test and refine prototypes as you make changes and improvements to the designs.
Before major milestones: Validate designs before key project stages, such as stakeholder reviews or final approvals.
Usability Testing: Conduct summative research to assess a design's overall performance and gauge real user feedback to guide future design decisions and enhancements.
How it works 🧑🏽💻
No existing prototype? No problem. We've made it easy to create one right within Optimal. Here's how:
Import your visuals
Start by uploading a series of screenshots or images that represent your design flow. These will form the backbone of your prototype.
Create interactive elements
Once your visuals are in place, it's time to bring them to life. Use our intuitive interface to designate clickable areas on each screen. These will act as navigation points for your test participants.
Set up the flow
Connect your screens in a logical sequence, mirroring the user journey you want to test. This creates a seamless, interactive experience for your participants.
Preview and refine
Before launching your study, take a moment to walk through your prototype. Ensure all clickable areas work as intended and the flow feels natural.
The result? A fully functional prototype that looks and feels like a real digital product. Your test participants will be able to navigate through it just as they would a live website or app, providing you with authentic, actionable insights.
By empowering you to build prototypes from scratch, we're removing barriers to early-stage testing. This means you can validate ideas faster, iterate with confidence, and ultimately deliver better digital experiences.
Or…import your prototypes directly from Figma
There’s a bit of housekeeping you’ll need to do in Figma in order to provide your participants with the best testing experience and not impact loading times of the prototype. You can import a link to your Figma prototype into your study, and it will carry across all the interactions you have set up. You’ll need to make sure your Figma presentation mode is made public in order to share the file with participants. If you make any updates to your Figma file, you can sync the changes in just one click.
When you set up your study, you’ll create tasks for participants to complete.
There are two different ways to build tasks in your prototype tests. You can set a correct destination by adding a start screen and a correct destination screen. That way, you can watch how participants navigate your design to find their way to the correct destination. Another option is to set a correct pathway and evaluate how participants navigate a product, app, or website based on the pathway sequence you set. You can add as many pathways or destinations as you like.
Adding post-task questions is a great way to help gather qualitative feedback on the user's experience, capturing their thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
Prototype testing offers a variety of analysis options and metrics to evaluate the effectiveness and usability of your design. By using these analysis options and metrics, you can get comprehensive insights into your prototype's performance, identify areas for improvement, and make informed design decisions:
Task results
The task results provide a deep analysis at a task level, including the success score, directness score, time taken, misclicks, and the breakdown of the task's success and failure. They provide great insight into the usability of your design to achieve a task.
Success score tells you the total percentage of participants who reached the correct destination or pathway that you defined for this task. It’s a good indicator of a prototype's usability.
Directness score is the total completed results minus the ‘indirect’ results.
A path is ‘indirect’ when a participant backtracks, viewing the same page multiple times, or if they nominate the correct destination but don’t follow the correct pathway
Time taken is how long it took a participant to complete your task and can be a good indicator of how easy or difficult it was to complete.
Misclicks measure the total number of clicks made on areas of your prototype that weren’t clickable, clicks that didn’t result in a page change.
Clickmaps
Clickmaps provide an aggregate view of user interactions with prototypes, visualizing click patterns to reveal how users navigate and locate information. They display hits and misses on designated clickable areas, average task completion times, and heatmaps showing where users believed the next steps to be. Filters for first, second, and third page visits allow analysis of user behavior over time, including how they adapt when backtracking. This comprehensive data helps designers understand user navigation patterns and improve prototype usability.
Participant paths
The Paths tab in Optimal provides a powerful visualization to understand and identify common navigation patterns and potential obstacles participants encounter while completing tasks. You can include thumbnails of your screens to enhance your analysis, making it easier to pinpoint where users may face difficulties or where common paths occured.
Coming soon to prototyping 🔮
Later this year, we’re running a closed beta for video recording with prototype testing. This feature captures behaviors and insights not evident in click data alone. The browser-based recording requires no plugins, simplifying setup. Consent for recording is obtained at the start of the testing process and can be customized to align with your organization's policies. This new feature will provide deeper insights into user experience and prototype usability.
These enhancements to prototype testing offer a comprehensive toolkit for user experience analysis. By combining quantitative click data with qualitative video insights, designers and researchers can gain a more nuanced understanding of user behavior, leading to more informed decisions and improved product designs.
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