Introducing Optimal’s New Interviews Tool: Automate Your Research, Accelerate Your Insights

At Optimal, we know the reality of user research: you've just wrapped up a fantastic interview session, your head is buzzing with insights, and then... you're staring at hours of video footage that somehow needs to become actionable recommendations for your team.

‍
User interviews and usability sessions are treasure troves of insight, but the reality is reviewing hours of raw footage can be time-consuming, tedious, and easy to overlook important details. Too often, valuable user stories never make it past the recording stage.

‍
That's why we’re excited to announce the launch of early access for Interviews, a brand-new tool that saves you time with AI and automation, turns real user moments into actionable recommendations, and provides the evidence you need to shape decisions, bring stakeholders on board, and inspire action.

‍

Interviews, Reimagined

‍

What once took hours of video review now takes minutes. With Interviews, you get:
‍

• Instant clarity: Upload your interviews and let AI automatically surface key themes, pain points, opportunities, and other key insights.
  
• Deeper exploration: Ask follow-up questions and anything with AI chat. Every insight comes with supporting video evidence, so you can back up recommendations with real user feedback.
  
• Automatic highlight reels: Generate clips and compilations that spotlight the takeaways that matter.
  
• Real user voices: Turn insight into impact with user feedback clips and videos. Share insights and download clips to drive product and stakeholder decisions.
  ‍

‍

Groundbreaking AI at Your Service

‍

This tool is powered by AI designed for researchers, product owners, and designers. This isn’t just transcription or summarization, it’s intelligence tailored to surface the insights that matter most. It’s like having a personal AI research assistant, accelerating analysis and automating your workflow without compromising quality. No more endless footage scrolling.

‍
The AI used for Interviews as well as all other AI with Optimal is backed by AWS Amazon Bedrock, ensuring that your AI insights are supported with industry-leading protection and compliance.

‍

‍

What’s Next: The Future of Moderated Interviews in Optimal

‍

This new tool is just the beginning. Soon, you’ll be able to manage the entire moderated interview process inside Optimal, from recruitment to scheduling to analysis and sharing.

‍

Here’s what’s coming:

• Recruit users using Optimal’s managed recruitment services.
  
• View your scheduled sessions directly within Optimal. Link up with your own calendar.
  
• Connect seamlessly with Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams.
  ‍

Imagine running your full end-to-end interview workflow, all in one platform. That’s where we’re heading, and Interviews is our first step.
‍

Ready to Explore?

Interviews is available now for our latest Optimal plans with study limits. Start transforming your footage into minutes of clarity and bring your users’ voices to the center of every decision. We can’t wait to see what you uncover.

👉 Register for Early Access
‍

Want to learn more and see it in action? Join us for our upcoming webinar on Oct 21st at 12 PM PST.

👉 Register for the Interviews Webinar

At Optimal, we believe in the transformative potential of AI to accelerate your workflow and time to insights. Our goal is simple: keep humans at the heart of every insight while using AI as a powerful partner to amplify your expertise. 

‍

By automating repetitive tasks, providing suggestions for your studies, and streamlining workflows, AI frees you up to focus on what matters most—delivering impact, making strategic decisions, and building products people love.

‍

That’s why we’re excited to announce our latest AI feature: AI-Powered Question Simplification. 

‍

Simplify and Refine Your Questions Instantly

‍

Ambiguous or overly complex wording can confuse respondents, making it harder to get reliable, accurate insights. Plus, refining survey and question language is manual and can be a time-consuming process with little guidance. To solve this, we built an AI-powered tool to help study creators craft questions that resonate with participants and speed up the process of designing studies.

‍

Our new AI-powered feature helps with:

• Instant Suggestions: Simplify complex question wording and improve clarity to make your questions easier to understand.
• Seamless Editing: Accept, reject, or regenerate suggestions with just a click, giving you complete control.
• Better Insights: By refining your questions, you’ll gather more accurate responses, leading to higher-quality data that drives better decisions.
  ‍

Apply AI-Powered Question Simplification to any of your survey questions or to screening questions, and pre- and post-study questions in prototype tests, surveys, card sorts, tree tests, and first-click tests.
‍

‍

AI: Your Research Partner, Not a Replacement

AI is at the forefront of our innovation at Optimal this year, and we’re building AI into Optimal with clear principles in mind:
‍

1. AI does the tedious work: It takes on repetitive, mundane tasks, freeing you to focus on insights and strategy.
2. AI assists, not dictates: You can adapt, change, or ignore AI suggestions entirely.
3. AI is a choice: We recognize that Optimal users have diverse needs and risk appetites. You remain in control of how, when, and if you use AI.
   ‍

‍Ready to Get Started? 

Keep an eye out for more updates throughout 2025 as we continue to expand our platform with AI-powered features that help you uncover insights with speed, clarity, and more confidence.

Want to see how AI can speed up your workflow?

‍

Apply AI-Powered Question Simplification today or check out AI Insights to experience it for yourself!

2025 is already proving to be an exciting year for UX research, and we’re just getting started! With a range of new features and updates that empower teams to move from design to decisions faster, Optimal is bringing the best tools to the table for everyone and making research accessible across all teams. Let’s dive into what’s already here and what's coming next!
‍

Video Recording for Prototype Testing

We’re excited to announce that the closed beta for video recording for prototype testing has launched. By capturing screen, audio, and/or video, this feature takes research beyond metrics to give you a deeper understanding of user intent and pain points. Our Optimal Recruitment service also ensures you connect with the right participants for video recording, driving meaningful insights from the start.

‍

New Study Flow for Faster Study Creation

Say hello to the new Study Flow, an intuitive tab that helps to accelerate study creation, combining the Messages & instructions and Questionnaire tabs into one. Visualize every step of the participant’s journey, from the welcome screen to the final thank-you message with the Study Flow panel. Save time by quickly duplicating questions across Surveys and other study types. Navigate through studies with ease by collapsing and expanding sections as needed.

‍

What We’re Working On Next

Here’s a sneak peek at some exciting features in the works:

‍

AI-Powered Survey Question Simplification
We’re unleashing an AI-powered feature to help users simplify complex question wording and improve clarity. Users can quickly accept, reject, or regenerate more suggestions with a click. By improving clarity and simplifying your questions, you’ll gather more accurate, higher-quality insights that drive better results.

‍

This AI feature is available for surveys questions as well as screening, pre and post study questions for surveys, prototype tests, card sorts, tree tests and first-click tests. This is just the beginning of even more AI-driven improvements to come, all aimed at helping to accelerate your time to insights.

‍

Advanced Logic Capabilities
We’re working on bringing more advanced logic capabilities to Optimal - one of the most highly requested features for surveys. With display logic, the study changes dynamically - showing or hiding answer options or subsequence questions based on a participant’s previous responses. Apply display logic to Surveys, screening questions, and pre- and post-study questions. This is just the beginning. We’ll be exploring additional advanced logic capabilities in 2025. 
‍

‍‍
Join Us on the Journey
‍Stay tuned for regular updates, and let us know how we can make your research experience even better. Have feedback or feature requests? We’d love to hear from you so we can continue to shape the future of Optimal.