Workspaces delivers new privacy controls and improved collaboration
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.
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!
What’s new at Optimal? 🤩
Managed Recruitment 🙋🙋🏾
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.
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).
What’s coming next? 🔮🧙
Test your designs early and often with our latest tool: Prototype Testing ⚙️
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.
Video Recording 🎬📽️🎞️
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.
Qualitative Insights & AI 🤖✨
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.
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.
Surveys Upgrade 📋
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.
Help us build a better Optimal Workshop 🧰
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.
In the rapidly evolving world of user experience research (UXR), demonstrating value and impact has become more crucial than ever. While traditional metrics like Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores and Net Promoter Scores (NPS) have long been the go-to measures for UX professionals, they often fall short in capturing the full scope and depth of UXR's impact. As organizations increasingly recognize the strategic importance of user-centered design, it's time to explore more comprehensive and nuanced approaches to measuring UXR's contribution.
Limitations of traditional metrics
CSAT and NPS, while valuable, have significant limitations when it comes to measuring UXR impact. These metrics provide a snapshot of user sentiment but fail to capture the direct influence of research insights on product decisions, business outcomes, or long-term user behavior. Moreover, they can be influenced by factors outside of UXR's control, such as marketing campaigns or competitor actions, making it challenging to isolate the specific impact of research efforts.
Another limitation is the lack of context these metrics provide. They don't offer insights into why users feel a certain way or how specific research-driven improvements contributed to their satisfaction. This absence of depth can lead to misinterpretation of data and missed opportunities for meaningful improvements.
Alternative measurement approaches
To overcome these limitations, UX researchers are exploring alternative approaches to measuring impact. One promising method is the use of proxy measures that more directly tie to research activities. For example, tracking the number of research-driven product improvements implemented or measuring the reduction in customer support tickets related to usability issues can provide more tangible evidence of UXR's impact.
Another approach gaining traction is the integration of qualitative data into impact measurement. By combining quantitative metrics with rich, contextual insights from user interviews and observational studies, researchers can paint a more comprehensive picture of how their work influences user behavior and product success.
Linking UXR to business outcomes
Perhaps the most powerful way to demonstrate UXR's value is by directly connecting research insights to key business outcomes. This requires a deep understanding of organizational goals and close collaboration with stakeholders across functions. For instance, if a key business objective is to increase user retention, UX researchers can focus on identifying drivers of user loyalty and track how research-driven improvements impact retention rates over time.
Risk reduction is another critical area where UXR can demonstrate significant value. By validating product concepts and designs before launch, researchers can help organizations avoid costly mistakes and reputational damage. Tracking the number of potential issues identified and resolved through research can provide a tangible measure of this impact.
Case studies of successful impact measurement
While standardized metrics for UXR impact remain elusive, some organizations have successfully implemented innovative measurement approaches. For example, one technology company developed a "research influence score" that tracks how often research insights are cited in product decision-making processes and the subsequent impact on key performance indicators.
Another case study involves a financial services firm that implemented a "research ROI calculator." This tool estimates the potential cost savings and revenue increases associated with research-driven improvements, providing a clear financial justification for UXR investments.
These case studies highlight the importance of tailoring measurement approaches to the specific context and goals of each organization. By thinking creatively and collaborating closely with stakeholders, UX researchers can develop meaningful ways to quantify their impact and demonstrate the strategic value of their work.
As the field of UXR continues to evolve, so too must our approaches to measuring its impact. By moving beyond traditional metrics and embracing more holistic and business-aligned measurement strategies, we can ensure that the true value of user research is recognized and leveraged to drive organizational success. The future of UXR lies not just in conducting great research, but in effectively communicating its impact and cementing its role as a critical strategic function within modern organizations.
Maximize UXR ROI with Optimal
While innovative measurement approaches are crucial, having the right tools to conduct and analyze research efficiently is equally important for maximizing UXR's return on investment. This is where the Optimal Workshop platform comes in, offering a comprehensive solution to streamline your UXR efforts and amplify their impact.
The Optimal Platform provides a suite of user-friendly tools designed to support every stage of the research process, from participant recruitment to data analysis and insight sharing. By centralizing your research activities on a single platform, you can significantly reduce the time and resources spent on administrative tasks, allowing your team to focus on generating valuable insights.
Key benefits of using Optimal for improving UXR ROI include:
Faster research cycles: With automated participant management and data collection tools, you can complete studies more quickly, enabling faster iteration and decision-making.
Enhanced collaboration: The platform's sharing features make it easy to involve stakeholders throughout the research process, increasing buy-in and ensuring insights are actioned promptly.
Robust analytics: Advanced data visualization and analysis tools help you uncover deeper insights and communicate them more effectively to decision-makers.
Scalable research: The platform's user-friendly interface enables non-researchers to conduct basic studies, democratizing research across your organization and increasing its overall impact.
Comprehensive reporting: Generate professional, insightful reports that clearly demonstrate the value of your research to stakeholders at all levels.
By leveraging the Optimal Workshop, you're not just improving your research processes – you're positioning UXR as a strategic driver of business success. Our platform's capabilities align perfectly with the advanced measurement approaches discussed earlier, enabling you to track research influence, calculate ROI, and demonstrate tangible impact on key business outcomes.
Ready to transform how you measure and communicate the impact of your UX research? Sign up for a free trial of the Optimal platform today and experience firsthand how it can drive your UXR efforts to new heights of efficiency and effectiveness.
“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)
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.
