Last week Optimal Workshop was delighted to sponsor UXDX USA 2024 in New York. The User Experience event brings together Product, Design, UX, CX, and Engineering professionals and our team had an amazing time meeting with customers, industry experts, and colleagues throughout the conference. This year, we also had the privilege of sharing some of our industry expertise by running an interactive forum on “Measuring the Value of UX Research” - a topic very close to our hearts.

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Our forum, hosted by Optimal Workshop CEO Alex Burke and Product Lead Ella Fielding, was focused on exploring the value of User Experience Research (UXR) from both an industry-wide perspective and within the diverse ecosystem of individual companies and teams conducting this type of research today.

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The session brought together a global mix of UX professionals for a rich discussion on measuring and demonstrating the effectiveness of and the challenges facing organizations who are trying to tie UXR to tangible business value today.

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The main topics for the discuss were: 

• Metrics that Matter: How do you measure UXR's impact on sales, customer satisfaction, and design influence?
• Challenges & Strategies: What are the roadblocks to measuring UXR impact, and how can we overcome them?
• Beyond ROI:  UXR's value beyond just financial metrics

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Some of the key takeaways from our discussions during the session were: 

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1. The current state of UX maturity and value
   • Many UX teams don’t measure the impact of UXR on core business metrics and there were more attendees who are not measuring the impact of their work than those that are measuring it. 
   • Alex & Ella discussed with the attendees the current state of UX research maturity and the ability to prove value across different organizations represented in the room. Most organizations were still early in their UX research maturity with only 5% considering themselves advanced in having research culturally embedded.

2. Defining and proving the value of UX research
   • The industry doesn’t have clear alignment or understanding of what good measurement looks like. Many teams don’t know how to accurately measure UXR impact or don’t have the tools or platforms to measure it, which serve as core roadblocks for measuring UXRs’ impact. 
   • Alex and Ella discussed challenges in defining and proving the value of UX research, with common values being getting closer to customers, innovating faster, de-risking product decisions, and saving time and money. However, the value of research is hard to quantify compared to other product metrics like lines of code or features shipped.

3. Measuring and advocating for UX research
   • When teams are measuring UXR today there is a strong bias for customer feedback, but little ability or understanding about how to measure impact on business metrics like revenue. 
   • The most commonly used metrics for measuring UXR are quantitative and qualitative feedback from customers as opposed to internal metrics like stakeholder involvement or tieing UXR to business performance metrics (including financial performance). 
   • Attendees felt that in organizations where research is more embedded, researchers spend significant time advocating for research and proving its value to stakeholders rather than just conducting studies. This included tactics like research repositories and pointing to past study impacts as well as ongoing battles to shape decision making processes. 
   • One of our attendees highlighted that engaging stakeholders in the process of defining key research metrics prior to running research was a key for them in proving value internally. 

4. Relating user research to financial impact
   • Alex and Ella asked the audience if anyone had examples of demonstrating financial impact of research to justify investment in the team and we got some excellent examples from the audience proving that there are tangible ways to tie research outcomes to core business metrics including:
   • Calculating time savings for employees from internal tools as a financial impact metric. 
   • Measuring a reduction in calls to service desks as a way to quantify financial savings from research.

5. Most attendees recognise the value in embedding UXR more deeply in all levels of their organization - but feel like they’re not succeeding at this today. 
   • Most attendees feel that UXR is not fully embedded in their orgnaization or culture, but that if it was - they would be more successful in proving its overall value.
   • Stakeholder buy-in and engagement with UXR, particularly from senior leadership varied enormously across organizations, and wasn’t regularly measured as an indicator of UXR value 
   • In organizations where research was more successfully embedded, researchers had to spend significant time and effort building relationships with internal stakeholders before and after running studies. This took time and effort away from actual research, but ended up making the research more valuable to the business in the long run. 

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With the large range of UX maturity and the democratization of research across teams, we know there’s a lot of opportunity for our customers to improve their ability to tie their user research to tangible business outcomes and embed UX more deeply in all levels of their organizations. To help fill this gap, Optimal Workshop is currently running a large research project on Measuring the Value of UX which will be released in a few weeks.
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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. 

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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.

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When to use prototype testing 

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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.

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Early in the design process: Test initial ideas and concepts to gauge user reactions and feelings about your conceptual solutions. 

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Iterative design phases: Continuously test and refine prototypes as you make changes and improvements to the designs. 

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Before major milestones: Validate designs before key project stages, such as stakeholder reviews or final approvals.

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Usability Testing: Conduct summative research to assess a design's overall performance and gauge real user feedback to guide future design decisions and enhancements.

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How it works 🧑🏽‍💻

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No existing prototype? No problem. We've made it easy to create one right within Optimal. Here's how:

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1. 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.

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2. 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.

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3. 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.

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4. 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.

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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.

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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.

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Or…import your prototypes directly from Figma 

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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. 

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Help Article: Find out more about how to set up your Figma file for testing

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How to create tasks 🧰

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When you set up your study, you’ll create tasks for participants to complete. 

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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. 

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Adding post-task questions is a great way to help gather qualitative feedback on the user's experience, capturing their thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.

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Help Article: Find out how to analyze your results

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Prototype testing analysis and metrics 📊

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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:

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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. 

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• 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.

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Clickmaps

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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.

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Participant paths 

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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.

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Coming soon to prototyping 🔮

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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.

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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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Start prototype testing today

We’re excited to announce the latest updates to our platform to help teams test, validate and gain insights early in the design process. Looking ahead to the rest of 2024, stay tuned as we expand Optimal’s research capabilities with new tools and features, including Prototype Testing, Qualitative Insights, and upgraded Surveys along with enhanced admin management and user roles!

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What’s new at Optimal? 🤩

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Managed Recruitment 🙋🙋🏾

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We’re thrilled to share the launch of our new Managed Recruitment offering with high quality and expanded profiling capabilities for hard-to-reach audiences. Managed Recruitment leverages our in-house recruitment team and a new powerful, award-winning panel — PureSpectrum — to give you access to millions of participants across 100+ countries. Optimal handles recruitment logistics from start to finish, guaranteeing quality responses and replacing low-quality participants at no extra cost.

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Early access is now available. To get started, submit your criteria via the request form. Starting in early August, you’ll be able to access Managed Recruitment via the Optimal Recruit tab. Recruitment is available for all Optimal tools except for Qualitative Insights (Reframer).

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What’s coming next? 🔮🧙

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Test your designs early and often with our latest tool:  Prototype Testing ⚙️
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The newest edition to the Optimal toolkit is just around the corner.  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 have the option to easily import low or high-fidelity prototypes directly from Figma or build your own prototypes from scratch  by uploading images or screenshots and creating clickable areas. Prototype testing allows you to Identify usability issues and areas for improvement throughout the design process to iterate and improve your designs quickly with your users.

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Video Recording 🎬📽️🎞️
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After we launch Prototype testing, we’ll be adding Video Recording to allow you to record a participant completing a prototype test. You can capture nonverbal cues like eye rolls and frustration, screens and voices to better understand user experiences, and gain deeper insights for Prototype Testing. Video recording is browser-based, with no plug in required eliminating setup complexities. Consent to record is captured upfront in the testing process and can be tailored to meet your organization’s policies.

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Qualitative Insights & AI 🤖✨‍

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You’ll be able to capture meaningful insights faster and more efficiently with the new Insights feature under our Qualitative Insights (Reframer) tool. Create Insights — takeaways or key findings from a study — and keep them organized under the new Insights tab. Create a new Insight from observations or use AI to generate Insights. Each Insight will contain a title, description, and associated observations.

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Note that you and your organization will always maintain complete control over any AI engagement. All AI-generated results are editable. Leverage AI as needed for your studies or decide to turn off access completely for your organization.

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Surveys Upgrade 📋
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We’ll be transforming surveys with enhanced usability, advanced survey logic, and AI integration, empowering you to create, launch, and analyze surveys with ease. Our focus on improving usability will make creating, editing, and launching surveys easier than ever, including new question types, question cloning, question grouping, and AI assistance to streamline survey creation.

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Help us build a better Optimal Workshop 🧰

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We’re looking for customers to join our research and beta 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.

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