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

Our exciting new feature, segments, saves time by allowing you to create and save groups of participant responses based on various filters. Think of it as your magic wand to effortlessly organize and scrutinize the wealth of data and insight you collect in your studies. Even more exciting is that the segments are available in all our quantitative study tools, including Optimal Sort, Treejack, Chalkmark, and Questions.

‍

What exactly are segments?

‍

In a nutshell, segments let you effortlessly create and save groups of participants' results based on various filters, saving you and the team time and ensuring you are all on the same page. 

A segment represents a demographic within the participants who completed your study. These segments can then be applied to your study results, allowing you to easily view and analyze the results of that specific demographic and spot the hidden trends.

‍

What filters can I use?

‍

Put simply, you've got a treasure trove of participant data, and you need to be able to slice and dice it in various ways. Segmenting your data will help you dissect and explore your results for deeper and more accurate results.

‍

Question responses: Using a screener survey or pre - or post-study questions with pre-set answers (like multi-choice), you can segment your results based on their responses.

‍

URL tag: If you identify participants using a unique identifier such as a URL tag, you can select these to create segments.

‍

Tree test tasks, card sort categories created, first click test and survey responses: Depending on your study type, you can create a segment to categorize participants based on their response in the study. 

‍

Time taken: You can select the time taken filter to view data from those who completed your study in a short space of time. This may highlight some time wasters who speed through and probably haven’t provided you with high-quality responses. On the other hand, it can provide insight into A/B tests for example, it could show you if it’s taking participants of a tree test longer to find a destination in one tree or another.

‍

With this feature, you can save and apply multiple segments to your results, using a combination of AND/OR logic when creating conditions. This means you can get super granular insights from your participants and uncover those gems that might have otherwise remained hidden.

‍

When should you use segments?

‍

This feature is your go-to when you have results from two or more participant segments. For example, imagine you're running a study involving both teachers and students. You could focus on a segment that gave a specific answer to a particular task, question, or card sort. It allows you to drill down into the nitty-gritty of your data and gain more understanding of your customers.

‍

How segments help you to unlock data magic 💫

‍

Let's explore how you can harness the power of segments:

‍

Save time: Create and save segments to ensure everyone on your team is on the same page. With segments, there's no room for costly data interpretation mishaps as everyone is singing from the same hymn book.

‍

Surface hidden trends: Identifying hidden trends or patterns within your study is much easier.  With segments,  you can zoom in on specific demographics and make insightful, data-driven decisions with confidence.

‍

Organized chaos: No more data overload! With segments, you can organize participant data into meaningful groups, unleashing clarity and efficiency.

‍

How to create a segment

‍

Ready to take segments for a spin?  To create a new segment or edit an existing one, go to  Results > Participants > Segments. Select the ‘Create segment’ button and select the filters you want to use. You can add multiple conditions, and save the segment.  To select a segment to apply to your results, click on ‘All included participants’ and select your segment from the drop-down menu.  This option will apply to all your results in your study. 

‍

We can't wait to see the exciting discoveries you'll make with this powerful tool. Get segmenting, and let us know what you think! 

‍

Help articles
‍

How to add a group tag in a study URL for participants
‍
How to integrate with a participant recruitment panel

‍

We’re excited to share some new features and product updates that we've rolled out lately and what’s coming up next.

‍

What's new…

‍

Speeding up task analysis in Treejack 🚤

‍

Customer feedback and research have shown that users analyse results in Treejack in a task-by-task manner. To better support this way of working, we’ve updated Treejack results to ensure the success and directness of each task are easier to compare with the new Task overview tab in Results.  This new visualisation is available in Results > Overview> Task overview section in Optimal Workshop.

‍

‍

Aggregate path views 

‍

We have also introduced the aggregate paths view in the Paths tab (it used to only be visible via the compare tasks button). This allows users to more easily see what the popular paths are for each task and how much each successful path was used (or not). 

‍

Over the next few months, we’ll continue working through our results tabs to update them to a task-by-task view and highlight insights at a task level. 

‍

Improving the quality of participant recruitment

‍

We’re continuing work to improve the quality of participants recruited in Optimal Workshop. Our latest release involves eliminating all participants that rush through a Treejack study.  We’ve analysed years of participants to get a good idea of what ‘rushing’ means, and we can now identify these ‘speeders’ and remove them from our participant pools. We have also removed the limit in-app for replacement participants across all study types, and released updates to immediately eliminate poor quality participants from custom orders. 

‍

Help guide: How to replace study participants in-app

‍

What’s next:

‍

• Identifying participants that rush through other tools and remove from participant pools.
• Build more automated flagging and behaviours to eliminate other behaviours that indicate poor-quality participants.
• Continued monitoring and analysis to ensure high participant quality.

‍

Templates are here 🙌 

‍

We are excited to announce our first six project templates are now available. Templates have been created with industry experts to give you the confidence to quickly launch studies and back your results to make data-driven decisions.   These ready-made templates give you a headstart on your research by providing you with the right range of study types and when to use them. 

‍

Where will they live?

‍

Templates are accessible in the app from the Dashboard > Browse Templates. From the ‘templates menu’ select a template that matches your use case for example ‘I need to organise content into categories’ and get going faster than before. You can edit and customise the templates to suit your research goals. 

‍

More templates from our community

‍

This is just the beginning of our template journey and while we continue to build up our collection we’d love your input too. If there are templates that you regularly use and think the community could benefit from we’d love to hear from you. Email us at product@optimalworkshop.com.

‍

What’s coming up…

‍

Optimal Academy 🎓

‍

The Optimal Academy is due to launch in later this month.  The Academy will provide education that enables our customers to get started faster with our tools and elevate their knowledge of all things Information Architecture and UX. 

‍

The first courses available will be a series of Optimal Workshop tool-based lessons, including best practice study setup analysis and recruitment.  You can expect to see more exclusive content and courses from industry experts and institutions on a diverse range of topics continuing to drop in 2023 and 2024.

‍

Enterprise team features

‍

We’re committed to making things easier for our team customers, particularly on the administration side of our product. Our product team have begun discovery on improving our administration features, and have had a lot of great customer feedback to help shape up the opportunities. We are aiming to make improvements to this area of the product later this year.

Whether you’re designing a new website or redesigning an existing one, card sorting is a quick, reliable and inexpensive research tool that can significantly improve your information architecture. By improving your information architecture, you’re giving yourself the best chance at delivering a product that is accessible, usable and relevant.

So, what exactly is card sorting? In short, card sorting is a user research technique that helps you discover how people understand and categorize information. Since great information architecture is built on the premise of organizing and categorizing information, card sorting is a secret weapon for website and digital product designers around the world. Actually, the tool is super common, and for good reason.

In this article we’ll help you prepare and conduct card sorting research. We’ll also help you make sense of the data you find and how to apply it to design great information architecture.

Planning and Preparation

Card sorting delivers the best results when you clearly define your goals. The narrower your scope, the more insightful and practical your results will be. It’s important to focus on one goal at a time when planning a card sorting study. What part of your information structure do you need clarification on? Organizing FAQ’s, product categories in an online store, or submenus, are common examples of card sorting projects.

Next, how best can you feasibly recruit participants? Depending on your situation, you may prefer conducting remote card sorts or in-person. Card sorts in person allow you to read body language and you may be more comfortable asking qualitative “why” questions of your participants. Whereas the benefits of remote card sorts, like OptimalSort, is that you aren’t constrained by location or time - just set it up, share the link with participants, then quickly analyze the results. In either case, be sure to recruit participants that represent the demographics of your intended users.

The next step is to prepare the cards themselves. The cards will represent the elements/topics that you wish to organize. Typically, you should aim for between 30 and 50 cards in order to get enough useful data. It also forces you to include only the most relevant cards. Additionally, they should also be on the same conceptual level to avoid confusion and ambiguity.

Finally, decide if you’re asking participants to group the cards based on categories that you decide (closed card sorting), or if participants will be able to create their own groups for cards (open card sorting). You can also facilitate hybrid card sorting which starts off as a closed card sort, but gives participants the option to create additional categories themselves. When you’re deciding, think about your task list (how you’re asking using to sort the cards) and how open-ended you’re prepared for the answers to be. Closed card sorting will narrow your results, whereas open will broaden your results.

Conducting the Session

Now that you’ve done the preparation, it’s time for the fun part! How involved you’ll be depends on whether you’re conducting remote or in-person sessions. We’ll discuss in-person card sorting first, then we’ll point out how remote card sorting differs.

An overview of conducting in-person card sorts:

1. First, shuffle the cards and give them to your participant(s). Ask them to look at each card, then direct them to either organize into groups on their own (open) or into the groups you have provided (closed). It’s important to emphasize to the participant that there are no right or wrong answers. Remember, you’re looking for a real, unfiltered insight into how people organize your information. You can even ask them to think out loud while they’re sorting the cards to gain additional, qualitative insight. One benefit of group sessions is that they usually do this anyway via natural discussion.
2. Then, if you’re running an open card sort, ask your participant(s) to name the groups they have organized. This will help you to understand the rationale behind their decisions and will give you some pointers when you come to labeling information architecture.
3. Once the session is complete, ask participants some open questions. Did you find any cards difficult to place? Did some overlap? Were any left out entirely? This sort of questioning, along with your notes throughout the session, will prove invaluable when you come to analyze the results.
4. Carefully collect the cards and make a record of the groups - there’s nothing worse than clearing the table and messing up the cards before you do this!

Remote card sorts differ from remote sessions in that once you’ve set up the cards in a tool like OptimalSort, you’re good to go. No printing, no shuffling, no resetting. You simply send a link to your participants and ask them to complete the task within a defined timeframe. Online card sorts are generally quicker and less time consuming in this respect, and they may allow you to find more participants and therefore more data.

There are two key things to highlight when running a remote card sort session. Firstly, ensure your instructions are clear and concise. Unlike an in-person session you won’t get the opportunity to clarify any misunderstandings. Secondly, you may consider a follow up questionnaire to gather additional qualitative insights. Check out this facilitation guide for more pointers on remote card sorting.

Analyzing and Interpreting the Results

Now that you’ve got all of your juicy data, it’s time to analyze it! If you ran a remote card sort, there will be some manual processing of your results (usually translating data to excel) which can be time consuming, whereas online tools will generally have analysis tools built right in. This is great for getting quick insights and quick development of information architecture.

When analyzing results, you’re really looking for patterns by identifying similar groups and labels. Using a tool like OptimalSort, for example, you’ll be provided with a few reports that will help you identify patterns and themes:

• Participants Table: Review all of the people who took part in your card sort and segment or exclude them.
• Participant-Centric Analysis (PCA): See the most popular grouping strategies as well as the alternatives among those people who disagreed with the first strategy.
• Dendrograms: Quickly spot popular groups of cards and get a sense of how similar or different your participant’s card sorts were.

Strong patterns or themes that emerge from the data tell us that participants understood categories in a similar way. On the flipside, different or disperse patterns tell us that there was no clear consensus on how information should be categorized. Both insights support effective design of information architecture. The goal is to find common ground in order to create seamless user experiences.

So far we’ve discussed statistical analysis which is all about the hard numbers. But it’s important to infuse some of the qualitative data into your reporting too. If you find that there is confusion within your results or no clear themes, you need to understand why. This is where the interpretation of questionnaire feedback or notes from in-person sessions become so valuable.

Using a combination of your data and your insights, it’s helpful to pull a summary together of your findings in a report. This can be shared with the wider team who have influence on the design of information architecture. Check out this analysis guide for more information on interpreting your results.

Conclusion

Card sorting is a fairly quick and straightforward way to inform information architecture design. It allows us to put the user at the center of our decisions surrounding the categorisation and grouping of information. Why is this important? Because as designers we can often assume how things should be organized. It’s too easy to be influenced by internal factors, like organization structures and the status quo. Don’t fall into this trap - use card sorting to gather clear, unbiased feedback on your information architecture.

Effective card sorting has clear objectives and is best suited to answering specific, information-related questions. We recommend using it when you need clarification around specific information structure, such navigation, menus and product categorisation.

As we’ve discussed, there are a few different approaches to card sorting research. They all have their place, so hoose which one best suits your needs. There’s a lot of resources available if you want to learn more. A good place to start is our card sorting 101 article. Good luck and happy researching!

Your cards have been sorted, and now you have lots of amazing data and insight to help improve your information architecture. So how do you interpret the results? 

‍

Never fear, our product ninjas Alex and Aidan are here to help. In our latest live training session they take you on a walk-through of card sort analysis using OptimalSort.
‍

‍
What they cover:

‍

• Use cases for open, closed and hybrid card sort methodologies
• How, when and why to standardize categories
• How to interpret 3D cluster views, dendrograms, and similarity matrix
• Tips on turning those results into actionable insights

‍

‍

We all know that building a robust information architecture (IA) can make or break your product. And getting it right can rely on robust user research. Especially when it comes to creating human-centered, intuitive products that deliver outstanding user experiences.

‍

But what are the best methods to test your information architecture? To make sure that your focus is on building an information architecture that is truly based on what your users want, and need.

‍

What is user research? 🗣️🧑🏻💻

‍

With all the will in the world, your product (or website or mobile app) may work perfectly and be as intuitive as possible. But, if it is only built on information from your internal organizational perspective, it may not measure up in the eyes of your user. Often, organizations make major design decisions without fully considering their users. User research (UX) backs up decisions with data, helping to make sure that design decisions are strategic decisions. 

‍

Testing your information architecture can also help establish the structure for a better product from the ground up. And ultimately, the performance of your product. User experience research focuses your design on understanding your user expectations, behaviors, needs, and motivations. It is an essential part of creating, building, and maintaining great products. 

‍

Taking the time to understand your users through research can be incredibly rewarding with the insights and data-backed information that can alter your product for the better. But what are the key user research methods for your information architecture? Let’s take a look.

‍

Research methods for information architecture ⚒️

‍

There is more than one way to test your IA. And testing with one method is good, but with more than one is even better. And, of course, the more often you test, especially when there are major additions or changes, you can tweak and update your IA to improve and delight your user’s experience.

‍

Card Sorting 🃏

‍

Card sorting is a user research method that allows you to discover how users understand and categorize information. It’s particularly useful when you are starting the planning process of your information architecture or at any stage you notice issues or are making changes. Putting the power into your users’ hands and asking how they would intuitively sort the information. In a card sort, participants sort cards containing different items into labeled groups. You can use the results of a card sort to figure out how to group and label the information in a way that makes the most sense to your audience. 

‍

There are a number of techniques and methods that can be applied to a card sort. Take a look here if you’d like to know more.

‍

Card sorting has many applications. It’s as useful for figuring out how content should be grouped on a website or in an app as it is for figuring out how to arrange the items in a retail store.You can also run a card sort in person, using physical cards, or remotely with online tools such as OptimalSort.

‍

Tree Testing 🌲

‍

Taking a look at your information architecture from the other side can also be valuable. Tree testing is a usability method for evaluating the findability of topics on a product. Testing is done on a simplified text version of your site structure without the influence of navigation aids and visual design.

‍

Tree testing tells you how easily people can find information on your product and exactly where people get lost. Your users rely on your information architecture – how you label and organize your content – to get things done.

‍

Tree testing can answer questions like:

• Do my labels make sense to people?
• Is my content grouped logically to people?
• Can people find the information they want easily and quickly? If not, what’s stopping them?

‍

Treejack is our tree testing tool and is designed to make it easy to test your information architecture. Running a tree test isn’t actually that difficult, especially if you’re using the right tool. You’ll  learn how to set useful objectives, how to build your tree, write your tasks, recruit participants, and measure results.

‍

Combining information architecture research methods 🏗

‍

If you are wanting a fully rounded view of your information architecture, it can be useful to combine your research methods.

‍

Tree testing and card sorting, along with usability testing, can give you insights into your users and audience. How do they think? How do they find their way through your product? And how do they want to see things labeled, organized, and sorted? 

‍

If you want to get fully into the comparison of tree testing and card sorting, take a look at our article here, which compares the options and explains which is best and when.