Over the past year, we've been busy getting ready to bring Reframer v2 out of beta. After implementing a ton of feedback from our superb beta users and plenty of usability testing, the day has finally arrived. It's time to say bye-bye beta!

What is Reframer v2 beta?

Reframer v2 is a connected, collaborative and flexible workflow for your qualitative research and analysis. It allows you to capture, code, group, visualize and analyze your data within one single tool. And it's now available to all Optimal Workshop customers on a paid plan!

Conducting user interviews or usability tests? Reframer v2 is your new best friend.

To all the Reframer users out there, you'll be chuffed to know that we've taken the best bits of the original tool and added better analysis and collaboration (among other things). We think you'll really enjoy using Reframer v2 (and there's plenty of help to get you up and running in no time).

Why should I use Reframer v2?

We made it our mission to alleviate those pesky pain points that so many researchers have when conducting qualitative analysis.

No more context switching

Observations, notes and metadata spread across different tools? No thanks. There's no need for multiple platforms anymore.

Reframer v2 offers an intuitive end-to-end qualitative research workflow within one tool. Create and conduct interview sessions, capture notes, tag, group, theme, analyze, and collaborate without having to leave the app.

Detailed insights at your fingertips

With all your juicy data living in different tools, it can be pretty tricky to filter and gain in-depth insight.

Reframer v2 doesn't take a "one size fits all" approach. It's specifically built for qualitative research, with all your metadata and context in one place, all easily searchable with powerful filters.

Analyze your data your way

When you're ready for analysis, you don't want to be stuck doing it one way or the other.

We've added two different analysis methods to Reframer v2. Affinity mapping helps you with observation-based analysis, which is flexible, visual and collaborative. While the Themes tab offers tag-based analysis with powerful filters, giving you more quantifiable results.

Collaborate in real-time

Collaboration is key during qualitative research and analysis.

You can work together with your team members in Reframer v2. Simply invite them to your study and any edits or notes they make will show on the affinity map in real-time. You can also see their activity in the Study Members tab.

What will happen to the original Reframer?

Reframer v1 will be turned off eventually, and Reframer v2 will simply become Reframer. But we want to make sure that v2 is up to scratch, your data is safe and sound, and you're confident in using v2 before that happens.

Take a look at the next steps of the Reframer v2 release:

June 2022

Reframer v2 is rolled out to all paid customers. Based on feedback, we'll continue to build in and iterate on the most requested features. Reframer v2 will be the default for all new paid users, but current users can continue to toggle between v1 and v2.

Oct 2022

Reframer v2 is rolled out to all customers and is the default for all users. All studies in legacy Reframer will be moved into v2. Paid customers will have access to the full feature set, free users will have access to a limited version of the tool.

Early 2023 (date TBC)

Legacy Reframer is turned off and v2 becomes the new (and only) Reframer.

So there you have it! We're really excited to have Reframer v2 in front of all our paid customers, and we can't wait to hear what you think of it. If you've got suggestions or thoughts (good, bad or ugly), we want to know! Simply click the Feedback icon in the header and voila!

Please note: This tool is a work in progress and isn’t yet available to all Optimal Workshop customers. If you’d like to opt in to the beta, pop down to the bottom of this article to find out more.

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The ability to collect robust and trustworthy qualitative analysis is a must for any team who conducts user research. But so often, the journey to getting those juicy insights is time-consuming and messy. With so many artefacts – usually spread across multiple platforms and mediums – trying to unearth the insights you set out to get can feel overwhelming.

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Since launching Reframer in 2019, we’ve had some great feedback from our users and the community. This feedback has led to the development of the beta version of Reframer v2 – in which we’ve expanded the note taking and tagging capabilities, as well as building a more powerful and flexible analysis functionality: affinity mapping.

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What is Reframer v2 beta? 🤨

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Simply put, Reframer v2 is a workflow that houses your data and insights all in one place. Yes, that’s right! No more context switching between various platforms or tabs. It’s an end-to-end qualitative analysis workflow that allows you to capture, code, group and visualize your data.

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We’ve put a lot of focus into making sure that the analysis side of things is easy to learn and understand, regardless of your experience level. It’s also more flexible and better suited to qualitative research with data sets both big and small.

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What’s the difference between Reframer and v2 beta? 😶🌫️

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The main difference is the analysis workflow. Reframer’s tag-based theme builder has been replaced with an affinity map-based workflow in v2 beta.

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The rest of the workflow remains mostly the same, though there are a couple of key differences.

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User interface and set up 📲

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While the activities within the set up and capture phase remain the same, we’ve updated the user interface to better reflect the qualitative research workflow.

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All set up related actions (study overview, tasks, tags, segments, and study members) now live together under one tab – ‘Setup’.

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You’ll find your sessions and all the observation data you’ve collected in the ‘Sessions’ tab.

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Guest notetakers ✍️

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For now, we’ve disabled the ability to invite guest notetakers who don’t hold an Optimal Workshop license. That’s not to say this won’t be reintroduced at some stage in the future, though. And of course, your team members who do have a license will be able to collaborate, take notes and analyze data.

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Say hello to affinity mapping 📍🗺️

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The biggest (and the best) difference between Reframer and v2 beta is the analysis workflow. In Reframer, themes are created by combining filters and tags. In Reframer v2 beta, themes are created by grouping observations in the affinity map.

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Affinity mapping is a flexible and visual way to quickly group, organize and make sense of qualitative data. It’s a popular method amongst research practitioners of all experience levels, though it’s usually conducted in a standalone tool outside of where the raw data is captured, organized, tagged and stored.

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Reframer v2 beta makes affinity mapping more powerful and user-friendly than ever – giving you the ability to search and filter your data, and have your observations, tags, and themes all connected and stored in one place.

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What exactly does ‘beta’ mean in this case? 🙂⃤

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It means that Reframer v2 is still very much a work in progress and isn’t yet available to all Optimal Workshop users. We’re continuing to develop new functionality that will complete the qualitative data analysis workflow and, if you’re part of the beta, you can expect to see new features and changes being rolled out in the coming months. 

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There may be a few bugs along the way, and we know the current name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue so standby for a rebrand of the tool name once it’s ready for general consumption!

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We need your help! 🆘

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Want to help us make Reframer v2 beta really, really great? We’d love that. We here at Optimal Workshop rely on your thoughts, opinions and feedback to build and update our tools so they benefit those who matter most: you.

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If you’d like to opt into the beta, sign up here.

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And if you’d like to get down into the nitty gritty about the what, why and how of Reframer v2 beta, check out our Help Center articles here.

We’ve just added the ability to share pre- and post-study questionnaire results directly from 4 of the Optimal Workshop tools. We’ve also introduced sharing to all questionnaire results in Questions. Read on to find out why we developed this feature and how it works.

Why we made this change

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to share the analysis outputs of your research with the people that need to see it. That’s why we’ve added some powerful new functionality to our UX tools.

Prior to this change, sharing questionnaire results could often be quite time-consuming. You’d need to download the results via the “Participant data” download, then transform them into a readable format and share them manually. Not ideal, and especially annoying when you’re in the midst of a project and just need to share the data quickly.

What we’ve changed

The existing “Sharing” tab (under “Results”) in OptimalSort, Treejack and Chalkmark will now have a “Questionnaire” tick box option under “Shared tabs”. Ticking this gives users the ability to share pre- and post-study questionnaire responses.

If you choose to share questionnaire results, keep in mind that you’re sharing raw responses from your participants. Before sharing with anyone, keep the privacy of your participants in mind and check if there’s any personally identifiable information included. If there is any personally identifiable information, you can always exclude the participant from your results on the “Participants” tab then go ahead and share your results.

Questions will get a new “Sharing” tab (under “Results”, it doesn’t currently have one) that will have one option (“Questionnaire”) that is always on and disabled.

The results page will behave much the same as it does currently, but now you’ll be able to see the individual participant responses for each question and share them.

What this means for you is that now, with the click of a button, you can share your questionnaire results with your team, stakeholders, clients and whoever else needs to see them. Easy!

Wrap up

We’ve got more exciting updates on the way for the tools in the Optimal Workshop platform – stay tuned to the newsfeed and our blog. You can also read about some of the other updates we’ve launched recently right here.

Note: We’re gradually rolling out this feature, so it may not appear for you straight away.

We’ve made a few changes to our navigation header in-app to make it easier and more intuitive to use. In this blog post, we’ll explore the changes you’re going to see, why we made these changes and take a look at some of the testing that took place behind the scenes.

Let’s dive in!

What’s changed?

We’ve shuffled most tabs in the header around, but you’ll see the most obvious change when you create a study. You’ll now land directly on the ‘New Study’ screen, instead of being dropped in ‘Settings’ and then having to find your way to ‘Create Study’.

We’ve also made some changes to the ‘Create’, ‘Recruit’ and ‘Results’ tabs. These are now set in the header so you can easily navigate between creating, recruiting and reviewing results, instead of having to go back to ‘Settings’ to manage recruitment.

When you click ‘Back to studies’, you’ll now be taken back to the folder you’re currently working in. Previously you’d be taken back to the ‘All studies’ dashboard, so no more scrolling through the dashboard to find the folder you’re looking for. You can also rename your study in the header now, instead of having to navigate back to ‘Setup’.

Finally, you can now end your study by clicking the ‘End study’ button in the header. We’d discovered that some people had trouble ending their studies in the past, now you can just click the button with the tiny checkered flag.

Why we made these changes

Our goal is to create the world’s best user research platform – and a big part of that is ensuring that our tools are easy to use. Through testing, we found that our old navigation header had usability, consistency and design issues. Specifically, usability testing and tree testing showed that simplifying our information architecture (IA) would drastically improve the user experience and flow.

We asked the question: “How might we improve the flow of our tool without affecting customers that currently use our tools?”

This led us down a research rabbit hole, but we came to the conclusion that we’d need to redesign the navigation header across all of our tools and adjust the IA to match the user journey. In other words, we needed to redesign the navigation to match how people were using our tools.

What we discovered during our user testing

User research and testing inform all of the changes that we make to our tools, and this project was no different.

We ran 3 tree tests using Treejack, testing 3 different IAs with 97 participants (30 per test). We also ran a first-click test using Chalkmark to validate what we were doing in Treejack.

The 3 IA’s we tested were:

• The same as the prototype (Create, Design, Launch, Recruit, Results)
• Removing Launch and splitting up children branches (Create, Design, Recruit, Results)
• Moving Design back into Create (Create, Recruit, Results)

Note: A caveat of the results is that we used the phrase ‘Set up’ in many questions which would bias the second test in favor of any question where ‘Setup’ is the correct answer.

We found that the third tree performed the best during our test. On average, it required a little less backtracking and was less direct than the first 2 tests, but had a higher chance of completion simply because there were fewer options available.

Wrap up

So that’s our new in-app header navigation – we hope you like it. Got a question? Feedback? Click the yellow Intercom circle in the bottom right-hand corner to get in touch with our support team.

Happy testing!

Reframer is a qualitative research tool that was built to help teams capture and make sense of their research findings quickly and easily. For those of you who have been a long-standing Optimal Workshop customer, you may know that Reframer has been in beta for some time. In fact, it has been in beta for 2 whole years. Truth was that, while we’ve cheerfully responded to your feedback with a number of cool features and improvements, we had some grand plans up our sleeve. So, we took everything we learned and went back to drawing board with the goal to provide the best dang experience we can.We’ll soon be ready to launch Reframer out of beta and let it take its place proudly as a full time member of our suite of user research tools. However, in the spirit of continuous improvement, we want to give you all a chance to use it and give us feedback on the new experience so far.

First-time Reframer user?

Awesome! You’ll get to experience the newer version of Reframer with a fresh set of eyes. To enable Reframer, log in to your Optimal Workshop account. On your dashboard you’ll see a button to join the Reframer beta on your screen at right.

Used Reframer before?

Any new studies you create will automatically use the slick new version. Not quite ready to learn the new awesome? No worries you can toggle back and forth between the old version and the new in the top right corner of your screen.To learn about Reframer’s new look and features, watch the video or read the transcript below to hear more about these changes and why we made them.

When is Reframer actually coming out of beta?

This year. Stay tuned.

Video transcript:  

We’re this close to having our qualitative research tool, Reframer, all set to release from beta.But we just couldn’t wait to share some of the changes we’ve got lined up. So, we’ve gone ahead and launched a fresh version of Reframer to give you a taste of what’s to come.These latest updates include a more streamlined workflow and a cleaner user interface, as well as laying the foundations for some exciting features in the coming months.So let’s take a look at the revamped Reframer.We’ve updated the study screen to help you get started and keep track of where your research is at.

• You now have an area for study objectives to keep your team on the same page

• And an area for reference links, to give you quick access to prototypes and other relevant documents

• Session information is now shown here too, so you can get an overview of all your participants at a glance

• And we’ve created a home for your tags with more guidance around how to use them, like example tags and groups to help you get started.

What’s the most important thing when observing a research session? Collecting insights of course! So we’ve simplified the capture experience to let you focus on taking great notes.

• You can choose to reveal your tags, so they’re at the ready, or hide them so you can save your tagging till later

• We’ve created a whole range of keyboard shortcuts to speed up adding and formatting observations

• The import experience is now more streamlined, so it’s easier to bring observations from other sources into Reframer

• And, with some huge improvements behind the scenes, Reframer is even faster, giving you a more seamless note taking experience.

Now for something totally new — introducing review mode. Here you can see your own observations, as well as those made by anyone else in your team. This makes it easy to tidy up and edit your data after your session is complete. You can filter, search and tag observations, so you’ll be ready to make sense of everything when you move to analysis.We’ve added more guidance throughout Reframer, so you’ll have the confidence you’re on the right track. New users will be up and running in no time with improved help and easy access to resources.You might notice a few changes to our UI as well, but it’s not just about looks.

• We’ve changed the font to make it easier to read on any screen size

• Our updated button colours to provide better contrast and hierarchy

• And we’ve switched our icons from fonts to images to make them more accessible to more users.

And that’s where we’re at.We've got a lot more exciting features to come, so why not jump in, give the new Reframer a try and tell us what you think!Send us your feedback and ideas at research@optimalworkshop.com and keep an eye out for more changes coming soon. Catch you later!

We’ve been working hard over the last few weeks on some nifty little changes to the way you can use, create and manage tags in Reframer. Today, we’re happy to announce that all these changes are now live. Yay!Now, you can group your tags and add custom colors. Learn a little bit about how these new features work and how you can use them below.

More flexibility with your tags

We made these changes so that the notetaking and analysis stages of your research projects are simpler. Previously, Reframer tags would all be the same shade of blue and organized alphabetically — not always the easiest way to find the tags you’re looking for. Now you can add as many tag groups as you like to your Reframer sessions to make managing and finding your tags much quicker and more effortless. Even better, you can also apply colors to these groups. Pick from our selected palette of colors, or choose a custom one through the hex color code chart. Grouping your tags gives you the freedom to organize your research observations in the way that makes sense to your project. Here are some of the many ways you can group and color your research observations.

• Based on sentiment (happy, sad, angry, confused etc.)
• Based on products
• Based on tasks — for example, testing a certain section or feature of a website
• Based on devices used
• Based on defining personas
• Based on period of time/time of day

These new tag features give you a lot of flexibility — each group doesn’t have to contain only one color. You can add multiple colors within one group (for example, within a ‘sentiment’ group you could select red for ‘angry’, green for ‘happy’ etc).For a bit more guidance on how to write effective research observations in Reframer, check out this article we wrote for UX Mastery.We hope you like these new tag features for Reframer. As always, if you have any feedback please let us know on support@optimalworkshop.comAlternatively, comment below with some of the ways you’ve used these new features in your research.