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Optimal Workshop

Optimal Workshop

Overview

What is Optimal Workshop?

Optimal Workshop, a company in New Zealand, offers their suite of user research tools on a subscription basis, including the Treejack information architecture tool, OptimalSort card sorting test, Chalkmark first-click testing, and other tools.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Optimal Workshop has been a trusted tool for user research agencies and UX departments for over a decade. One agency has relied on it for …
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Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Team

$191

Cloud
per month per user

Individual

$208

Cloud
per month per user

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.optimalworkshop.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $191 per month per user
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Product Details

What is Optimal Workshop?

As a provider of tools for information architecture, Optimal Workshop helps organizations build better digital experiences backed by data. The solution boasts analysis functionalities, multiple testing methods, and participant recruitment to give users the confidence to deliver robust and actionable insights to the user's team.

Optimal Workshop Features

  • Supported: Tree testing
  • Supported: Card sorting
  • Supported: First click testing
  • Supported: Surveys
  • Supported: Qualitative research
  • Supported: Participant recruitment

Optimal Workshop Competitors

Optimal Workshop Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Optimal Workshop, a company in New Zealand, offers their suite of user research tools on a subscription basis, including the Treejack information architecture tool, OptimalSort card sorting test, Chalkmark first-click testing, and other tools.

Optimal Workshop starts at $191.

UserZoom, Maze, and UXtweak are common alternatives for Optimal Workshop.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.9.

The most common users of Optimal Workshop are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(36)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Optimal Workshop has been a trusted tool for user research agencies and UX departments for over a decade. One agency has relied on it for conducting information architecture research, particularly using tools like Optimal Sort for card sorting and Treejack for tree testing. This has allowed them to gather valuable insights into how users navigate websites and make data-driven recommendations to clients about improving website navigation.

In addition, Optimal Workshop is used by businesses looking to solve the problem of information architecture redesign, especially for multiple products that require IA design. The product and platform team at one company has successfully used Optimal Workshop's tree testing feature to assess findability within the labeling and structure schema of a B2B site. This has helped them optimize the website's organization and ensure that users can easily locate the desired information.

Another common use case for Optimal Workshop is remote workshops, where data on user flows, actions, and behaviors are collected through activities like card sorting and tree testing. This allows researchers to gain insights into how users categorize information and make informed design decisions. Moreover, Optimal Workshop's card sorting and tree testing features have become valuable alternatives to UserTesting.com for user testing in the design process.

Customer experience and design departments also utilize Optimal Workshop for conducting research studies and analysis. This includes activities such as user interviews, usability testing, tree testing, card sorting, and surveys. These features enable teams to gather rich qualitative data to inform their design decisions and improve the overall user experience.

Even marketing departments benefit from Optimal Workshop's capabilities. They use the platform to conduct tree tests on navigation menus to understand how users categorize menu items. By gathering this valuable data, marketers can optimize their website's information hierarchy and enhance user engagement.

Lastly, Optimal Sort proves to be an excellent platform for usability testing in order to ensure a user-friendly digital presence. It becomes especially useful for website or mobile development projects where developers need accurate insights into website navigation and information architecture to create an intuitive user interface.

Overall, Optimal Workshop has proven to be a versatile tool with a wide range of use cases. From conducting information architecture research and remote workshops to usability testing and data-driven analysis, it has become an invaluable asset for various teams and organizations across different industries.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
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Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The UX department uses Optimal Workshop. We use it for all sorts of IA work, card sorting and tree jacking. We’ve also used the participant recruitment facility by optimal workshop for all our projects. <div>In terms of business problem, it is mainly solving for Information Architecture re design for our firm, especially since we have multiple products that require IA design. </div>
  • Cardsort.
  • Tree tests.
  • Recruitment.
  • Better quality participant recruitment.
  • Promotion of other features.
Optimal workshop is best suited for its card sort and tree test features. Also the way it showcases reports for the tests that participants have performed is extremely useful. It has built a standard of reporting which is almost unmatched in the industry now. Very simple and clear to follow participant paths and to showcase to stakeholders.
  • Information architecture redesign.
We’ve never had to use much of their support services since the platform is very easy to use, we have however needed to transfer ownership between team members due to people leaving or other circumstances. Under those situations, the support offered to us has been been very quick and efficient and we never had to nudge them much to get the job done.
Excellent and easy platform to use. Easy to onboard new members of the team.
Easy to set up tests and follow number of participants performing the test.
Easy to plug into other platforms to record participants. Excellent reporting. Easy to share reports with stakeholders. Easy to recruit through platform, however the quality of participants can be better.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We used Optimal Workshop several times on the product and platform team for tree testing, which assesses find-ability within the labeling and structure schema. We run a B2B site, so it's important to collect data from the appropriate user segments. Unfortunately, this tool fails in many ways, especially the recruitment service and customer service.
  • Usually, data collection is quick.
  • It's cheaper than other tools, but the quality of participants and data is questionable.
  • The recruitment panelists are not professional, nor do they take the tasks seriously. You are going to get a lot of bad data.
  • They are HQ'd outside the US and must have a small team because the customer service is the absolute WORST I've experienced in their industry.
  • They pride themselves on documentation, but when they fail to document something they blame the customer for the mistake.
  • There are way too many limitations with the tool after you launch, limited integrations, and poor survey questionnaire options. The tool itself is far too basic for most sites, especially B2B.
My biggest issue is the lack of customer service and the poor quality of participants. After spending thousands of dollars with Optimal Workshop and receiving such a horrible experience, I'm now convinced that competitors like User Zoom are worth the cost and will be switching tools.
  • Site structure decision making.
Optimal Workshop is worse than its competitors, and I only tried it because of the price. Huge mistake.
No support for customers. It takes them days to get back to you. They never follow-up. They blame customers for their lack of documentation, and don't make things right when customers have a poor experience.
2
Product
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used Optimal Workshop in our marketing department to tree test navigation menus and understand how users would categorize menu items. While simple, this tool provides valuable data that would otherwise be very difficult to gather
  • Tree Testing - it is a very simple and easy to use system, that provides the data needed from a tree test
  • Card sorting - provides a system for users to participate in navigation menu layouts. We looked into several options, but this seemed very intuitive for users.
  • UI - It is a very basic tool, and emphasis is on functionality rather than design. They do allow some areas (like color and a logo) to be customized.
  • Integrations - It would be handy to have this data tie into other systems. However, it is pretty unique, so most systems would not have a way to organize this data our of the box
Tree testing and card sorting. Understand how users use our navigation to accomplish specific tasks. Understand how users group menu items. There are other features like where users first click, or keeping track of findings, but we have not used this features yet.
  • Optimal Workshop has provided a very low-risk, quick testing ground for navigation menus. So while the full impact cannot be determined, we are happy we are using Optimal Workshop, and are gaining benefits from it.
The support has been good. No complaints. I have not needed to contact support more than 1-2 times when I was first getting set up, because the tools work well and are pretty straight forward. They do have good documentation.
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