August 7, 2024
5 min

Welcome to our latest addition: Prototype testing 🐣

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:

  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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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. 

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

How to create tasks 🧰

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.

Help Article: Find out how to analyze your results

Prototype testing analysis and metrics 📊

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.

Start prototype testing today

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From Exposition to Resolution: Looking at User Experience as a Narrative Arc

“If storymapping could unearth patterns and bring together a cohesive story that engages audiences in the world of entertainment and film, why couldn’t we use a similar approach to engage our audiences?’Donna Lichaw and Lis Hubert

User Experience work makes the most sense to me in the context of storytelling. So when I saw Donna Lichaw and Lis Hubert’s presentation on storymapping at edUi recently, it resonated. A user’s path through a website can be likened to the traditional storytelling structure of crisis or conflict, exposition — and even a climax or two.

The narrative arc and the user experience

So just how can the same structure that suits fairytales help us to design a compelling experience for our customers? Well, storyboarding is an obvious example of how UX design and storytelling mesh. A traditional storyboard for a movie or TV episode lays out sequential images to help visualize what the final production will show. Similarly, we map out users' needs and journeys via wireframes, sketches, and journey maps, all the while picturing how people will actually interact with the product.

But the connection between storytelling and the user experience design process goes even deeper than that. Every time a user interacts with our website or product, we get to tell them a story. And a traditional literary storytelling structure maps fairly well to just how users interact with the digital stories we’re telling.Hence Donna and Lis’ conception of storymapping as ‘a diagram that maps out a story using a traditional narrative structure called a narrative arc.’ They concede that while ‘using stories in UX design...is nothing new’, a ‘narrative-arc diagram could also help us to rapidly assess content strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.’

Storytelling was a common theme at edUI

The edUi conference in Richmond, Virginia brought together an assembly of people who produce websites or web content for large institutions. I met people from libraries, universities, museums, various levels of government, and many other places. The theme of storytelling was present throughout, both explicitly and implicitly.Keynote speaker Matt Novak from Paleofuture talked about how futurists of the past tried to predict the future, and what we can learn from the stories they told. Matthew Edgar discussed what stories our failed content tell — what story does a 404 page tell? Or a page telling users they have zero search results? Two great presentations that got me thinking about storytelling in a different way.

Ultimately, it all clicked for me when I attended Donna and Lis’ presentation ‘Storymapping: A Macguyver Approach to Content Strategy’ (and yes, it was as compelling as the title suggests). They presented a case study of how they applied a traditional narrative structure to a website redesign process. The basic story structure we all learned in school usually includes a pretty standard list of elements. Donna and Lis had tweaked the definitions a bit, and applied them to the process of how users interact with web content.

Points on the Narrative Arc (from their presentation)

narrative arc UX

Exposition — provides crucial background information and often ends with ‘inciting incident’ kicking off the rest of the story

Donna and Lis pointed out that in the context of doing content strategy work, the inciting incident could be the problem that kicks off a development process. I think it can also be the need that brings users to a website to begin with.

Rising Action — Building toward the climax, users explore a website using different approaches

Here I think the analogy is a little looser. While a story can sometimes be well-served by a long and winding rising action, it’s best to keep this part of the process a bit more straightforward in web work. If there’s too much opportunity for wandering, users may get lost or never come back.

Crisis / Climax — The turning point in a story, and then when the conflict comes to a peak

The crisis is what leads users to your site in the first place — a problem to solve, an answer to find, a purchase to make. And to me the climax sounds like the aha! moment that we all aspire to provide, when the user answers their question, makes a purchase, or otherwise feels satisfied from using the site. If a user never gets to this point, their story just peters out unresolved. They’re forced to either begin the entire process again on your site (now feeling frustrated, no doubt), or turn to a competitor.

Falling Action — The story or user interaction starts to wind down and loose ends are tied up

A confirmation of purchase is sent, or maybe the user signs up for a newsletter.

Denouement / Resolution — The end of the story, the main conflict is resolved

The user goes away with a hopefully positive experience, having been able to meet their information or product needs. If we’re lucky, they spread the word to others!Check out Part 2 of Donna and Lis' three-part article on storymapping.  I definitely recommend exploring their ideas in more depth, and having a go at mapping your own UX projects to the above structure.

A word about crises. The idea of a ‘crisis’ is at the heart of the narrative arc. As we know from watching films and reading novels, the main character always has a problem to overcome. So crisis and conflict show up a few times through this process.While the word ‘crisis’ carries some negative connotations (and that clearly applies to visiting a terribly designed site!), I think it can be viewed more generally when we apply the term to user experience. Did your user have a crisis that brought them to your site? What are they trying to resolve by visiting it? Their central purpose can be the crisis that gives rise to all the other parts of their story.

Why storymapping to a narrative arc is good for your design

Mapping a user interaction along the narrative arc makes it easy to spot potential points of frustration, and also serves to keep the inciting incident or fundamental user need in the forefront of our thinking. Those points of frustration and interaction are natural fits for testing and further development.

For example, if your site has a low conversion rate, that translates to users never hitting the climactic point of their story. It might be helpful to look at their interactions from the earlier phases of their story before they get to the climax. Maybe your site doesn’t clearly establish its reason for existing (exposition), or it might be too hard for users to search and explore your content (rising action).Guiding the user through each phase of the structure described above makes it more difficult to skip an important part of how our content is found and used.

We can ask questions like:

  • How does each user task fit into a narrative structure?
  • Are we dumping them into the climax without any context?
  • Does the site lack a resolution or falling action?
  • How would it feel to be a user in those situations?

These questions bring up great objectives for qualitative testing — sitting down with a user and asking them to show us their story.

What to do before mapping to narrative arc

Many sessions at edUi also touched on analytics or user testing. In crafting a new story, we can’t ignore what’s already in place — especially if some of it is appreciated by users. So before we can start storymapping the user journey, we need to analyze our site analytics, and run quantitative and qualitative user tests. This user research will give us insights into what story we’re already telling (whether it’s on purpose or not).

What’s working about the narrative, and what isn’t? Even if a project is starting from scratch on a new site, your potential visitors will bring stories of their own. It might be useful to check stats to see if users leave early on in the process, during the exposition phase. A high bounce rate might mean a page doesn't supply that expositional content in a way that's clear and engaging to encourage further interaction.Looking at analytics and user testing data can be like a movie's trial advance screening — you can establish how the audience/users actually want to experience the site's content.

How mapping to the narrative arc is playing out in my UX practice

Since I returned from edUi, I've been thinking about the narrative structure constantly. I find it helps me frame user interactions in a new way, and I've already spotted gaps in storytelling that can be easily filled in. My attention instantly went to the many forms on our site. What’s the Rising Action like at that point? Streamlining our forms and using friendly language can help keep the user’s story focused and moving forward toward clicking that submit button as a climax.

I’m also trying to remember that every user is the protagonist of their own story, and that what works for one narrative might not work for another. I’d like to experiment with ways to provide different kinds of exposition to different users. I think it’s possible to balance telling multiple stories on one site, but maybe it’s not the best idea to mix exposition for multiple stories on the same page.And I also wonder if we could provide cues to a user that direct them to exposition for their own inciting incident...a topic for another article perhaps.What stories are you telling your users? Do they follow a clear arc, or are there rough transitions? These are great questions to ask yourself as you design experiences and analyze existing ones. The edUi conference was a great opportunity to investigate these ideas, and I can’t wait to return next year.

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1 min read

Product Roadmap Update

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

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Transforming digital experiences: Optimal Workshop's radical refresh

At Optimal Workshop, we've always prided ourselves on being pioneers in the field of UX research tools. Since our inception, we've been the go-to platform for UX researchers and designers looking to conduct card sorting, tree testing, and other critical user research activities. Our tools have helped shape the digital experiences of some of the world's leading companies.

The digital landscape is ever-changing, and with it, the needs of the professionals who create and optimize digital experiences. As we've grown and evolved alongside the industry, we've recognized the need to expand our reach and refine our value proposition to better serve not just UX researchers, but all professionals involved in delivering exceptional digital experiences.

That's why we're excited to announce a significant brand refresh and value pivot for Optimal Workshop. This evolution isn't just about a new coat of paint – it's a fundamental shift in how we position ourselves and the value we provide to our users and the broader digital experience community.

Why fix it if it ain’t broke? 💔🔨

Expanding Our User Base

While we've built a strong reputation among UX researchers, we've recognized that there's a broader audience of professionals who benefit from our tools and expertise. Product managers, marketers, customer experience specialists, and others involved in shaping digital experiences often lack access to professional-grade user research tools or the knowledge to effectively implement them.

Our brand refresh aims to make Optimal Workshop more accessible and relevant to this wider circle of professionals, without losing the deep respect we've earned from UX experts.

Adapting to market changes

The UX research landscape has evolved significantly since we first entered the market. With the proliferation of prototyping tools and the increasing speed of digital product development, there's been a shift away from extensive upfront research. However, we firmly believe that incorporating the voice of the customer throughout the development process is more critical than ever.

Our pivot allows us to emphasize the importance of integrating user research and insights at various stages of the digital experience lifecycle, not just during initial design phases.

Leveraging our expertise

As pioneers in the field, we have accumulated a wealth of knowledge about best practices in UX research and digital experience optimization. Our brand refresh positions us not just as a tool provider, but as a trusted partner and thought leader in the industry. We're doubling down on our commitment to sharing knowledge, standardizing best practices, and elevating the work of exceptional practitioners in the field.

Meeting evolving business needs through effective UX

The UX industry is evolving rapidly, with increasing investment and a diverse range of roles getting involved. From junior designers leveraging AI to seasoned researchers with deep expertise, the landscape is rich with talent and tools. However, the true value lies in how effectively these resources translate into business outcomes.

Optimal Workshop recognizes that exceptional digital experiences are no longer just nice-to-have – they're critical for engagement, conversion, and overall business success. Our tools bridge the gap between UX insights and tangible ROI by:

  • Democratizing research: Enabling teams across experience levels to gather valuable user data quickly and efficiently.
  • Accelerating decision-making: Providing fast, actionable insights that reduce design iterations and time-to-market.
  • Enhancing team effectiveness: Facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing between junior and senior team members.
  • Driving business value: Directly linking UX improvements to key performance indicators and bottom-line results.

In a landscape where basic UX practices are becoming table stakes, Optimal Workshop empowers organizations to go beyond the basics. We help teams leverage the full spectrum of UX expertise – from AI-assisted analysis to seasoned human insight – to create digital experiences that truly set businesses apart and deliver measurable returns on UX investment.

What's changing at Optimal Workshop 🐛🦋

1. Best-in-class research & insights platform

While our core tools remain a critical part of our offering, we're broadening our focus to position Optimal Workshop as a best-in-class research & insights platform for digital experience professionals. This means developing new tools, workflows, and integrations that cater to a wider range of use cases and user types.

2. Accessibility without compromise

We're committed to making our professional-grade tools more accessible to a broader audience without sacrificing the depth and rigor that our expert users expect. This means developing new onboarding experiences, creating more intuitive interfaces, and providing educational resources to help users at all levels get the most out of our platform.

3. Championing best practices

As part of our evolution, we're placing a greater emphasis on identifying, sharing, and standardizing best practices in digital experience research and optimization. Through case studies, partnerships with industry leaders, and our own thought leadership content, we aim to elevate the entire field of digital experience design.

4. Fostering a community of excellence

We're doubling down on our commitment to building and nurturing a community of digital experience professionals. This includes expanding our educational offerings, hosting more events and webinars, and creating opportunities for our users to connect and learn from each other. 

5. Emphasizing outcomes and ROI

We're aligning our messaging and product development with the real-world impact our users are seeking. That’s why the new names for our tools emphasize what each tool helps you achieve, rather than the technical methodology behind it. This outcome-focused approach helps users quickly identify which tool is right for their specific needs.

How our evolution benefits you 🚀

For our long-time users, rest assured that the tools and features you know and love aren't going anywhere, but their names are changing to plain English terms to be more approachable for professionals who may not have a background in UX research. In fact, our UXR platform is only going to get better as we invest in improvements and new capabilities. You'll also benefit from an expanded community of practitioners and a wealth of new resources to help you continue to grow and excel in your field.

For professionals who may be new to Optimal Workshop or to formalized user research in general, our refresh means it's easier than ever to get started with professional-grade tools and methodologies. We're here to support you at every step, from your first card sort to building a comprehensive, data-driven approach to optimizing digital experiences.

Join us in shaping tomorrow's digital experiences 🌟

This brand refresh and value pivot mark an exciting new chapter for Optimal Workshop. We're committed to continuing our tradition of excellence while expanding our reach and impact in the world of digital experiences.

As we move forward, we'll be rolling out new features, resources, and initiatives that align with our refreshed brand and value proposition. We're excited to partner with our users – both new and long-standing – to push the boundaries of what's possible in creating truly exceptional digital experiences.

Thank you for being part of the Optimal Workshop community. Whether you're a UX research veteran or just starting your journey in optimizing digital experiences, we're here to support you with the best tools, knowledge, and community in the industry. Together, we can shape the future of digital experiences and make the online world more intuitive, efficient, and enjoyable for everyone.

Onwards and upwards,

Alex Burke, CEO Optimal Workshop

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