October 8, 2025
2 min read

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

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1 min read

Entering a New Era for Insights: Easier, Faster, More Delightful for Everyone

When people come to us, we often hear the same story. The platforms they’ve used are clunky. Outdated. Confusing. Like navigating a maze of tabs, jargon, and complexity. Just to run a simple study.

That’s not what user testing should feel like.

At Optimal, we believe finding insights should feel energizing, not exhausting. So we’ve been working hard to make our platform easier than ever for anyone – no matter their experience level – to run meaningful research, fast.

We also know that the industry is changing. Teams want to do more with less, and platforms need to be able to empower more roles to run their own tests and find answers fast.

As pioneers in UX research, Optimal has always led the way. Today, Optimal is more powerful, intuitive, and impactful than ever, built to meet the needs of today’s teams and future-proofed for what’s next.

Our Vision is Built on Three Pillars


Access for All
We believe research should be accessible. Whether you’re a seasoned researcher or just getting started, you should be able to confidently run studies and uncover the “why” behind user behavior without facing a steep learning curve. All our latest plans include unlimited users, giving your whole team the ability to run research and find insights.


Speed to Insight
Time and budget shouldn't stand in your way. With smart automation and AI-powered insights, our tools help you go from question to clarity in days, not weeks.


Communicate with Impact
Great insights are only powerful if they’re shared. We help you translate data into clear, actionable stories that influence the right decisions across your team.

What’s New


We’re entering a new era at Optimal, one that’s even faster, smoother, and more enjoyable to use. 

Here’s what’s new:

  • A refreshed, modern homepage that’s clean, focused, and easier to navigate
  • Interactive demos and videos to help you learn how to get set up quickly, recruit, and gather insights faster
  • One-click study creation so you can get started instantly
  • Streamlined navigation with fewer tabs and clearer pathways


This year, we also launched our new study flow to reduce friction with study creation. It helps you easily visualize and understand the participant experience, from the welcome message to the final thank-you screen, every step of the way. Learn more about the Study Flow


Our refreshed designs reduces mental load, minimizes unnecessary scrolling, and helps you move from setup to insight faster than ever before.

Haven’t Looked at Optimal in a While?


We’ve gone well beyond a new homepage and design refresh. Now’s the perfect time to take another look. We’ve made big changes to help you get up and running quickly and get more time uncovering the insights that matter.

Using Optimal already? Log in to see what’s new.

New to Optimal? Start a free trial and experience it for yourself.

This is just the beginning. We can’t wait to bring you even more. Welcome to a simpler, faster, more delightful way to find insights.

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1 min read

Product Update - March 2025

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.

Learn more
1 min read

Get Reliable Survey Results Fast: AI-Powered Question Simplification

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!

Seeing is believing

Explore our tools and see how Optimal makes gathering insights simple, powerful, and impactful.