Improved organization, privacy controls, and more with new Workspaces 🚀

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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.

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More control with project privacy 🔒

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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.

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What changes for Enterprise customers? 😅

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• 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.
  

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Watch the video 🎞️

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What changes for Professional and Team customers? 😨

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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? 🔮

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This new release is an essential step towards improving how we manage users, licenses, and different role types in Optimal Workshop. We hope to deliver more updates, such as the ability to move studies between workspaces, in the near future. If you have any feedback or ideas you want to share on workspaces or Optimal Workshop, please email product@optimalworkshop.com; we'd love to hear from you.

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Simply put, ResearchOps is about making sure your research operations are robust, thought through and managed. 

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Having systems and processes around your UX research and your team keep everyone (and everything) organized. Making user research projects quicker to get started and more streamlined to run. And robust sharing, socializing, and knowledge storage means that everyone can understand the research insights and findings and put these to use - across the organization. And even better, find these when they need them. 

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Using the same tools across the team allows the research team to learn from each other, and previous research projects and be able to compare apples with apples, with everyone included. Bringing the team together across tools, research and results.

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We go into more detail in our ebook ResearchOps Checklist about exactly what you can do to make sure your research team is running at its best. Let’s take a quick look at 5 way to ensure you have the grounding for a successful ResearchOps team.

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1. Knowledge management 📚

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What do you do with all of the insights and findings of a user research project? How do you store them, how do you manage the insights, and how do you share and socialize?

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Having processes in place that manage this knowledge is important to the longevity of your research. From filing to sharing across platforms, it all needs to be standardized so everyone can search, find and share.

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2. Guidelines and process templates 📝

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Providing a framework for how to run research projects is are important. Building on the knowledge base from previous research can improve research efficiencies and cut down on groundwork and administration. Making research projects quicker and more streamlined to get underway.

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3. Governance 🏛

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User research is all about people, real people. It is incredibly important that any research be legal, safe, and ethical. Having effective governance covered is vital.

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4. Tool stack 🛠

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Every research team needs a ‘toolbox’ that they can use whenever they need to run card sorts, tree tests, usability tests, user interviews, and more. But which software and tools to use?

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Making sure that the team is using the same tools also helps with future research projects, learning from previous projects, and ensuring that the information is owned and run by the organization (rather than whichever individuals prefer). Reduce logins and password shares, and improve security with organization-wide tools and platforms. 

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5. Recruitment 👱🏻👩👩🏻👧🏽👧🏾

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Key to great UX research is the ability to recruit quality participants - fast! Having strong processes in place for screening, scheduling, sampling, incentivizing, and managing participants needs to be top of the list when organizing the team.

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Wrap Up 💥

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Each of these ResearchOps processes are not independent of the other. And neither do they flow from one to the other. They are part of a total wrap around for the research team, creating processes, systems and tools that are built to serve the team. Allowing them to focus on the job of doing great research and generating insights and findings that develop the very best user experience. 

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Afterall, we are creating user experiences that keep our users engaged and coming back. Why not look at the teams user experience and make the most of that. Freeing time and space to socialize and share the findings with the organization. 

Knowing and understanding why and how your users use your product is invaluable for getting to the nitty gritty of usability. Delving deep with probing questions into motivation or skimming over looking for issues can equally be informative. 

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Put super simply, usability testing literally is testing how usable your product is for your users. If your product isn’t usable users often won’t complete their task, let alone come back for more. No one wants to lose users before they even get started. Usability testing gets under their skin and really into the how, why and what they want (and equally what they don’t).

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As we have been getting used to video calling regularly and using the internet for interactions, usability testing has followed suit. Being able to access participants remotely has allowed us to diversify the participant pool by not being restricted to those that are close enough to be in-person. This has also allowed an increase in the number of participants per test, as it becomes more cost-effective to perform remote usability testing.

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But if we’re remote, does this mean it can’t be moderated? No - remote testing, along with modern technology, can mean that remote testing can be facilitated and moderated. But what is the best method - moderated or unmoderated?

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What is moderated remote research testing? 🙋🏻

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In traditional usability testing, moderated research is done in person. With the moderator and the participant in the same physical space. This, of course, allows for conversation and observational behavioral monitoring. Meaning the moderator can note not only what the participant answers but how and even make note of the body language, surroundings, and other influencing factors. 

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This has also meant that traditionally, the participant pool has been limited to those that can be available (and close enough) to make it into a facility for testing. And being in person has meant it takes time (and money) to perform these tests.

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As technology has moved along and the speed of internet connections and video calling has increased, this has opened up a world of opportunities for usability testing. Allowing usability testing to be done remotely. Moderators can now set up testing remotely and ‘dial in’ to observe participants anywhere they are. And potentially even running focus groups or other testing in a group format across the internet. 

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Pros:

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- In-depth gathering of insights through a back-and-forth conversation and observing of the participants.

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- Follow-up questions don’t underestimate the value of being available to ask questions throughout the testing. And following up in the moment.

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- Observational monitoring noticing and noting the environment and how the participants are behaving, can give more insight into how or why they choose to make a decision.

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- Quick remote testing can be quicker to start, find participants, and complete than in-person. This is because you only need to set up a time to connect via the internet, rather than coordinating travel times, etc.

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- Location (local and/or international) Testing online removes reliance on participants being physically present for the testing. This broadens your ability to broaden the pool, and participants can be either within your country or global. 

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Cons:

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- Time-consuming having to be present at each test takes time. As does analyzing the data and insights generated. But remember, this is quality data.

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- Limited interactions with any remote testing there is only so much you can observe or understand across the window of a computer screen. It can be difficult to have a grasp on all the factors that might be influencing your participants.

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What is unmoderated remote research testing? 😵💫

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In its most simple sense, unmoderated user testing removes the ‘moderated’ part of the equation. Instead of having a facilitator guide participants through the test, participants are left to complete the testing by themselves and in their own time. For the most part, everything else stays the same. 

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Removing the moderator, means that there isn’t anyone to respond to queries or issues in the moment. This can either delay, influence, or even potentially force participants to not complete or maybe not be as engaged as you may like. Unmoderated research testing suits a very simple and direct type of test. With clear instructions and no room for inference. 

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Pros:

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- Speed and turnaround,  as there is no need to schedule meetings with each and every participant. Unmoderated usability testing is usually much faster to initiate and complete.

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- Size of study (participant numbers) unmoderated usability testing allows you to collect feedback from dozens or even hundreds of users at the same time. 

- Location (local and/or international) Testing online removes reliance on participants being physically present for the testing, which broadens your participant pool.  And unmoderated testing means that it literally can be anywhere while participants complete the test in their own time.

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Cons:

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- Follow-up questions as your participants are working on their own and in their own time, you can’t facilitate and ask questions in the moment. You may be able to ask limited follow-up questions.

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- Products need to be simple to use unmoderated testing does not allow for prototypes or any product or site that needs guidance. 

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- Low participant support without the moderator any issues with the test or the product can’t be picked up immediately and could influence the output of the test.

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When should you do which? 🤔

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Each moderated and unmoderated remote usability testing have its use and place in user research. It really depends on the question you are asking and what you are wanting to know.

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Moderated testing allows you to gather in-depth insights, follow up with questions, and engage the participants in the moment. The facilitator has the ability to guide participants to what they want to know, to dig deeper, or even ask why at certain points. This method doesn’t need as much careful setup as the participants aren’t on their own. While this is all done online, it does still allow connection and conversation. This method allows for more investigative research. Looking at why users might prefer one prototype to another. Or possibly tree testing a new website navigation to understand where they might get lost and querying why the participant made certain choices.

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Unmoderated testing, on the other hand, is literally leaving the participants to it. This method needs very careful planning and explaining upfront. The test needs to be able to be set and run without a moderator. This lends itself more to wanting to know a direct answer to a query. Such as a card sort on a website to understand how your users might sort information. Or a first click to see how/where users will click on a new website.

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Wrap Up 🌯

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With the ability to expand our pool of participants across the globe with all of the advances (and acceptance of) technology and video calling etc, the ability to expand our understanding of users’ experiences is growing. Remote usability testing is a great option when you want to gather information from users in the real world. Depending on your query, moderated or unmoderated usability testing will suit your study. As with all user testing, being prepared and planning ahead will allow you to make the most of your test.

The only tool you need to power your entire qualitative research workflow is here. We’re excited to announce the new and improved Reframer is now live for all customers!

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What is qualitative research?

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It’s an integral part of any research journey. Think: customer or stakeholder interviews, prototype testing, A/B testing, moderated interviews, and open-ended questions. In a nutshell, it’s anything that isn’t a closed question.

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It’s also the most popular research method – 85% of people who do research conduct interviews and usability tests as part of their projects or workflows.

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How can Reframer help me with my qualitative research?

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It’s no secret that anyone conducting research is time-poor. Qualitative research is especially time-consuming and messy, as it’s almost always conducted across multiple tools or mediums. 

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Reframer gives you your time back, and enables you to manage your entire qualitative research workflow within one single tool. 

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From setting up and conducting interviews, through to analyzing your data – you can uncover those juicy insights in days, not weeks (or months) without ever having to leave the Optimal Workshop app.

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Powerful, in depth tagging and analysis tools

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Analyzing and making sense of your interview or usability testing data with Reframer is easy and flexible (not to mention very aesthetically pleasing!)  

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Visualize and group observations with 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 (i.e. post-its and whiteboards). 

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With Reframer, affinity mapping is more powerful than ever. Your observations, tags and themes are all connected and stored in one place. It’s easy to search and filter your data, group like observations by proximity, then review and sort them in table format. 

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Discover patterns with the theme builder

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The Themes tab offers tag-based analysis with powerful filters. It enables you to explore the relationships between your observations and then create themes based on these relationships. This gives you more quantifiable results to support the qualitative, observation-based analysis that you’ve done in the affinity map. 

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Explore connections between tags with the chord diagram

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The chord diagram is a beautifully visual way to easily explore the relationships between your tagged observations and spot key themes. 

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If you’ve got a lot of tags, it may look a little overwhelming to start with. But don’t let that fool you – it’s easy to get the hang of, and once you do, you’ll wonder how you ever analyzed data without it!

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Real-time collaboration with your team

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We recommend that you conduct qualitative research as a team, whenever you can. Reframer makes this easy – it was built with collaboration in mind. 

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Invite study members

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On an Optimal Workshop team plan, you can work together from start to finish. Team members can take notes and create or use tags during interview sessions. In the affinity map, you can work collaboratively to group and edit observations in real-time. 

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Invite guest notetakers

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If you just need an extra helping hand with taking notes during your interviews or usability tests, you can invite guest notetakers to your sessions. Guest notetakers can take notes in the sessions you invite them to, but can’t see notes taken by others or analyze data.

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The guest notetakers feature is a great way to involve your wider team or stakeholders in your user research activities.

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Share your findings

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Need the raw data from your interviews? Want to share your affinity map visuals with other team members? Both are easily downloadable with the click of a button!

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An intuitive, end-to-end workflow

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When it comes to conducting qualitative research, Reframer is faster, easier and tidier than using other digital (or manual) tools. It houses all your data and insights in one place and supports the collaborative nature of qualitative research. 

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It’s not just for seasoned researchers either. We’ve put special focus on ensuring that the analysis is easy to learn for anyone doing qualitative research, regardless of skill level. And our in-app guidance will have you up to speed in no time.

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So what are you waiting for? Login now and get started on your Reframer journey!

Many organizations are aware that staying relevant essential for their success. This can mean a lot of things to different organizations. What it often means is coming up with plenty of new, innovative ideas and products to keep pace with the demands and needs of the marketplace. It also means keeping up with the expectations and needs of your users, which often means  shorter and shorter product development life cycle times.  While maintaining this pace can be daunting, it can also be seen as a strength, tightening up your processes and cutting out unnecessary steps.

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A vital part of developing new (or tweaking existing) products is considering the end user first. There really is no point in creating anything new if it isn’t meeting a need or filling a gap in the market. How can you make sure you are hitting the right mark? Ask your users.  We look into some of the key user research methods available to help you in your product development process.

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If you want to know more about how to fit research into your product development process, take a read here.

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What is user research? 👨🏻💻

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User experience (UX) research, or user research as it’s commonly referred to, is an important part of the product development process. Primarily, UX research involves using different research methods to gather qualitative and quantitative data and insights about how your users interact with your product. It is an essential part of developing, building, and launching a product that truly meets the needs, desires, and requirements of your users. 

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At its simplest, user research is talking to your users and understanding what they want and why. And using this to deliver what they need.

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How does user research fit into the product development process? 🧩🧩

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User research is an essential part of the product development process. By asking questions of your users about how your product works and what place it fills in the market, you can create a product that delivers what the market needs to those who need it. 

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Without user research, you could literally be firing arrows in the dark, or at the very best, working from a very internal organizational view based on assuming that what you believe users need is what they want. With user research, you can collect qualitative and quantitative data that clearly tells you where and what users would like to see and how they would use it.

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Investing in user research right at the start of the product development process can save the team and the organization heavy investment in time and money. With detailed data responses, your brand-new product can leapfrog many development hurdles, delivering a final product that users love and want to keep using. Firing arrows to hit a bullseye.

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What user research methods should we use? 🥺

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Qualitative ResearchMethods

Qualitative research is about exploration. It focuses on discovering things we cannot measure with numbers and typically involves getting to know users directly through interviews or observation.

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Usability Testing – Observational

One of the best ways to learn about your users and how they interact with your new product is to observe them in their own environment. Watch how they accomplish tasks, the order they do things, what frustrates them, and what makes the task easier and/or more enjoyable for your subject. The data can be collated to inform the usability of your product, improving intuitive design and what resonates with your users.

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Competitive Analysis

Reviewing products already on the market can be a great start to the product development process. Why are your competitors’ products successful? And how well do they behave for users? Learn from their successes, and even better, build on where they may not be performing as well and find where your product fills the gap in the market.

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Quantitative Research Methods

Quantitative research is about measurement. It focuses on gathering data and then turning this data into usable statistics.

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Surveys

Surveys are a popular user research method for gathering information from a wide range of people. In most cases, a survey will feature a set of questions designed to assess someone’s thoughts on a particular aspect of your new product. They’re useful for getting feedback or understanding attitudes, and you can use the learnings from your survey of a subset of users to draw conclusions about a larger population of users.

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Wrap Up 🌯

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Gathering information on your users during the product development process and before you invest time and money can be hugely beneficial to the entire process. Collating robust data and insights to guide the new product development and respond directly to user needs, and filling that all-important niche. Undertaking user experience research shouldn’t stop at product development but throughout each and every step of your product life cycle. If you want to find out more about UX research throughout the life cycle of your product, take a read of our article UX research for each product phase.

In-person moderated user testing is a valuable part of any research project. Meaning you can see first-hand how your users interact with your prototypes and products. But in-person isn’t always a viable option. What to do if your project needs user testing but it’s just not possible to get in front of your users personally? 

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Let’s talk unmoderated user testing. This approach sidesteps the need to meet your participants face-to-face as it’s done entirely remotely, over the internet. By it’s very nature there are also considerable benefits to unmoderated user testing.

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What is unmoderated user testing? 💻👀

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In the most basic sense, unmoderated user testing removes the ‘moderated’ part of the equation. Instead of having a facilitator guide participants through the test, participants complete the testing activity by themselves and in their own time. For the most part, everything else stays the same.

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The key differences are:

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• You can’t ask follow-up questions
• You can’t use low-fidelity prototypes
• You can’t support participants (beyond the initial instructions you send them).

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Is unmoderated user testing right for your research project?

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By nature, unmoderated user research does not include any direct interaction between the researcher and the study participants. This is really the biggest benefit and also the biggest drawback. 

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Benefits of unmoderated usability testing 👩🏻💻

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• Speed and turnaround  - As there is no need to schedule meetings with each participant, unmoderated testing is usually much faster to initiate and complete. Depending on the study, it may be possible to launch a study and receive results in just a few hours.

• Size of study (participant numbers) - Unmoderated user testing also allows you to collect feedback from dozens or even hundreds of users at the same time.

• Location (local and/or international) -Testing online removes reliance on participants being physically present for the testing which broadens the ability to make contact with participants within your country or across the globe. 

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If you’d like to know more about the benefits of unmoderated usability testing, take a look at our article five reasons you should consider unmoderated user testing.

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Limitations of unmoderated usability testing 🚧

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• Early-prototype testing is difficult without a moderator to explain and help participants recover from errors or limitations of the prototype.

• Participant behavior - Without a moderator, participants tend to be less engaged and behave less realistically in tasks that depend on imagination, decision-making, or emotional responses.

• Inability to ask follow-up questions - by not being in the testing with the participant, the facilitator can’t ask further questions to get a deeper understanding of the participant’s reasoning. As you can’t rely on human judgment through a moderator being in the room with the participants and the ability to adjust the test in the moment, unmoderated usability testing needs thorough up front planning.

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Because of these limitations unmoderated usability testing usually works best for evaluating live websites and apps or highly functional prototypes.  It’s great for testing activities that don’t require a lot of imagination or emotion from participants. Such as testing functionality or answering direct queries to do with your product.

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What’s involved when setting up unmoderated usability testing? 🤔💭

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1. Define testing goals

With any usability testing, it pays to define your goals before getting underway with setting up the software. What do you want to know from the participants? Goals vary from test to test. Understanding your goals upfront will help you to make the correct tool choice.

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2. Define your demographic

With a clear understanding of your goal, now it’s time to consider which participants are right for your study. Think about who they are, their demographic, and where they live. Are they new users or existing? Are they experts or novices?

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3. Selecting testing software

As unmoderated studies, are done remotely, the software used to faciliate the study plays a key role in ensuring you get useful results. Without a facilitator, the software must guide the participants through the session and record what happens. Take the time to test software and select one that is right for your study.

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4. Write your own tasks and questions

Think through your goals and what you want to achieve from the testing. Many of the unmoderated testing services include study templates with generic example tasks. Remember they are templates, and your tasks and questions should be specific to your particular study. Any task instructions guiding the participants should be clear and directive.

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5. Trial session

You’ve done all of the upfront work, now it’s time to test that it works, the software does what you expect and the instructions you have written can be followed. Doing a test run is crucial, especially with unmoderated usability testing, as there won’t be a facilitator in the testing to fix any problems.

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6. Recruit participants

Having defined your target audience and demographic, now is the time to recruit participants. Ensuring you have some control over the recruitment process is important, either through screening questions or recruiting your own. There are services that  recruit from a pool of willing participants. Thiscan be a great way to get a wide range of users.

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7. Analyze results

You are likely to accumulate a lot of data from your unmoderated testing. You’ll need a way to organize and analyze the data to derive insights that are valuable. Depending on the type of usability testing you do will vary the type of results. Quantitative testing gives data-driven results and direct answers. Whereas qualitative testing through audio or video recordings of participants’ actions or comments will need time to analyze and look at behavioral observations. 

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Wrap Up 🌯

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Unmoderated usability testing can be a good option for your study. It may not be right for all of your studies all of the time. While it can be quick to implement and often cheaper than moderated usability testing, it still requires time and planning to ensure you get the data insights you are looking for. Following a checklist can be a great way to ensure you approach your research methodically.

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