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.
Think your company is truly user-centric? Think again. Our groundbreaking report on UX Research (UXR) in 2024 shatters common assumptions about our industry.
We've uncovered a startling gap between what companies say about user-centricity and what they actually do. Prepare to have your perceptions challenged as we reveal the true state of UXR integration and its untapped potential in today's business landscape.
The startling statistics
Here's a striking finding: only 16% of organizations have fully embedded UXR into their processes and culture. This disconnect between intention and implementation underscores the challenges in demonstrating and maximizing the true value of user research.
What's inside the white paper
In this comprehensive white paper, we explore:
How companies use and value UX research
Why it's hard to show how UX research helps businesses
Why having UX champions in the company matters
New ways to measure and show the worth of UX research
How to share UX findings with different people in the company
New trends changing how people see and use UX research
Stats sneak peek
- Only 16% of organizations have fully embedded UX Research (UXR) into their processes and culture. This highlights a significant gap between the perceived importance of user-centricity and its actual implementation in businesses.
- 56% of organizations aren't measuring the impact of UXR at all. This lack of measurement makes it difficult for UX researchers to demonstrate the value of their work to stakeholders.
- 68% of respondents believe that AI will have the greatest impact on the analysis and synthesis phase of UX research projects. This suggests that while AI is expected to play a significant role in UXR, it's seen more as a tool to augment human skills rather than replace researchers entirely.
The UX research crossroads
As our field evolves with AI, automation, and democratized research, we face a critical juncture: how do we articulate and amplify the value of UXR in this rapidly changing landscape? We’d love to know what you think! So DM us in socials and let us know what you’re doing to bridge the gap.
Are you ready to unlock the full potential of UXR in your organization?
Download our white paper for invaluable insights and actionable strategies that will help you showcase and maximize the value of user research. In an era of digital transformation, understanding and leveraging UXR's true worth has never been more crucial.
Keep an eye out for our upcoming blog series, where we'll delve deeper into key findings and strategies from the report. Together, we'll navigate the evolving UX landscape and elevate the value of user insights in driving business success and exceptional user experiences.
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.
Improved organization, privacy controls, and more with new Workspaces 🚀
One of our key priorities in 2024 is making Optimal Workshop easier for large organizations to manage teams and collaborate more effectively on delivering optimal digital experiences. Workspaces is going live this week, which replaces teams, and introduces projects and folders for improved organization and privacy controls. Our latest release lays the foundations to provide more control over managing users, licenses, and user roles in the app in the near future.
More control with project privacy 🔒
Private projects allow greater flexibility on who can see what in your workspace, with the ability to make projects public or private and manage who can access a project. Find out more about how to set up private projects in this help article.
What changes for Enterprise customers? 😅
The teams you have set up today will remain the same; they are renamed workspaces.
Studies will be moved to a 'Default project' within the new workspace, from here you can decide how you would like to organize your studies and access to them.
You can create new projects, move studies into them, and use the new privacy features to control who has access to studies or leave them as public access.
Optimal Workshop are here to help if you would like to review your account structure and make changes, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.
What changes for Professional and Team customers? 😨
Customers on either a Professional or Team plan will notice the studies tab will now be called Workspace. We have introduced another layer of organization called projects, and there is a new-look sidebar on the left to create projects, folders, and studies.
What's next for Workspaces? 🔮
This new release is an essential step towards improving how we manage users, licenses, and different role types in Optimal Workshop. We hope to deliver more updates, such as the ability to move studies between workspaces, in the near future. If you have any feedback or ideas you want to share on workspaces or Optimal Workshop, please email product@optimalworkshop.com; we'd love to hear from you.
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