Accelerate Study Creation with the New Study Flow

As we approach the end of 2024, it’s a great time to reflect on the progress we’ve made as a community and at Optimal. This year, Optimal users launched over 100,000 studies with over 1.2 million participants sharing insights to drive better business decisions and experiences.

Here's how we’ve worked to make research more accessible, speed up insight discovery, empower enterprise teams, and grow our platform’s capabilities in 2024.

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Democratizing Research

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Research for All
Research shouldn’t be limited to specialists or select teams—it should be accessible to everyone. In 2024, we focused on breaking down barriers to user research so that individuals across all divisions and teams can uncover actionable insights. Our tools are built to help anyone make confident, user-centered decisions, and this year, we’ve seen Optimal users from across all different types of teams, including product, marketing, content, research, design, information architecture, and education. We work to make our platform easy to use and learn, ensuring everyone can dive into research without barriers, regardless of their role or experience.

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A Milestone Year for UX Maturity
Understanding and improving UX maturity became a key focus for organizations this year. We launched our comprehensive UX Maturity Framework, complete with assessment tools that help teams identify their current state and plot a path forward. To support this journey, we developed detailed playbooks for each maturity level, offering practical guidance for teams looking to level up their UX practice. ‍‍‍

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Demonstrating the Value of UX
The conversation around UX value also took center stage in 2024. Our groundbreaking research into quantifying UX impact provided organizations with concrete data to support their UX investments. Through our popular webinar and blog series, we explored different approaches to communicating UX value to stakeholders, giving practitioners the tools they need to advocate for user-centered design.

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Accelerating Insight Discovery

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Prototype Testing
This year, we introduced Prototype Testing, enabling teams to test designs early and often. Teams can iterate quickly and ensure their ideas resonate with users before committing to development.

Video Recording (Beta)
We added a new feature to Prototype Testing that captures screen, audio and nonverbal cues—such as frustration—providing deeper insights into your users' experiences.

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Figma Integration
We also launched Figma integration for First-Click Testing and Prototype Testing, allowing users to connect design prototypes directly to Optimal studies. This integration makes it easier than ever to test, refine, and align designs with user needs—all without leaving Optimal.

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AI-Powered Insights
Our AI-Powered Insights help to uncover patterns and themes in qualitative and interview data. By analyzing large datasets, AI helps you discover key trends and accelerate decision-making.

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Optimal Recruitment
Recruiting high-quality participants can be a huge hassle and very time-consuming. That’s why we’ve relaunched Optimal Recruitment with expanded profiling capabilities, enhanced quality controls, and full-service support—to let you focus on what matters most: powerful insights to drive better business outcomes

Enabling Enterprise Teams

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Workspaces
For organizations with complex structures, we’ve introduced Workspaces and Projects to give admins greater control, improved organization, and increased privacy controls. Whether you're part of a large enterprise or a growing team, these enhancements simplify governance and amplify impact.

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Expanding Platform Capabilities in 2025

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Looking Ahead
As we head into 2025, our roadmap is packed with exciting features and improvements to make research more accessible, efficient, and impactful. Expect advancements across our platform, including video recording for prototype testing, a brand new survey tool with improved usability, advanced logic, and AI-powered capabilities to meet the evolving needs of teams worldwide. The best is yet to come - stay tuned and see you in 2025!

Figma has long been the go-to tool for UI/UX designers, known for its intuitive interface and real-time collaboration. In fact, over 95% of Fortune 500 companies rely on Figma, and 13 million monthly active users trust it to design and prototype digital experiences.

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If you’re already designing in Figma, integrating with Optimal can help to validate your ideas early, reduce costly mistakes, and deliver experiences users actually want.

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The Hidden Cost of Skipping Design Validation

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Validating designs before development and catching usability issues early has a measurable impact on both users and the business. Research consistently shows that:

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• Early usability testing and design validation can reduce later redesign or bug-fix costs by a significant margin up to 40-50%.
• Integrating customer insights into design decisions can increase user satisfaction by up to 70%.
• Companies that prioritize UX design experience a 50% faster time-to-market for their products.

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Figma + Optimal: Prototype Testing and Design Validation

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Instead of waiting for post-launch analytics or expensive redesigns, you can test your Figma prototypes with real users in hours, not weeks with Optimal. Get quantitative data, watch recordings, analyze heatmaps, and actually see where users struggle, all before a single line of code is written.

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Here’s a look into 4 practical ways teams use Figma and Optimal together.

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4 Ways to Test Figma Designs with Optimal

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1. Preference Testing: Let Users Pick the Winner

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Ever had a debate with your team about which design direction to take? Let data decide.

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Here's how:

• Create a Figma frame with two designs side-by-side (think: two homepage variations, competing button styles, different navigation approaches)
• Copy your Figma link and drop it into an Optimal first-click test
• Ask participants: "Which design do you prefer?"
• Watch the results roll in with heatmaps showing exactly where users clicked

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2. Concept Testing: Does Your Idea Actually Make Sense?

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You've got a bold new concept. It makes perfect sense to you. But will users get it?

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The process:

• Build wireframes or mockups in Figma (they don't need to be pixel-perfect)
• Import your Figma link into an Optimal first-click or prototype test
• Create tasks like “Click the option that best matches what you’re trying to do.” or “Click where you would sign up.”
• Analyze whether users successfully understand and navigate your concept

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3. Prototype Testing: Find the Friction Before Development

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You've built a clickable prototype with multiple screens and interactions. It looks polished. But does it actually work for users?

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Step-by-step:

• Build a complete interactive prototype in Figma
• Ensure all frames and flows are complete in Figma before importing into Optimal.
• Copy your Figma prototype URL (works even with password-protected links)
• Paste it into an Optimal prototype test
• Define realistic tasks: "You want to buy running shoes under $100. Complete the purchase."
• Watch video recordings and analyze usability metrics, clickmaps, misclicks, successes/failures, and heatmaps

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What you'll discover might surprise you. Users will:

• Click on things you never intended to be clickable
• Miss obvious CTAs you thought were perfectly placed
• Get lost in navigation that seemed intuitive to your team
• Abandon tasks at friction points you didn't know existed

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4. AI Prototype Testing: Validate AI-Generated Designs

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The rise of AI design tools like Figma Make has changed the game. You can now generate a functional prototype from a text prompt in minutes. But just because AI can create it doesn't mean users can use it.

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Quick workflow:

• Generate a prototype using Figma Make
• Copy the URL and drop it into an Optimal live site test
• Add your testing tasks
• Review recordings to spot usability issues

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This is perfect for rapid experimentation. 

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Getting Started Is Simple

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1. Prep your Figma file - Have a prototype or design ready
2. Copy the link - Grab your Figma share URL
3. Create your test - Choose first-click, prototype test, or live site test in Optimal
4. Paste and configure - Add your Figma URL and write your test tasks
5. Launch - Use your own participants or tap into Optimal's panel or Managed Recruitment services
6. Analyze - Review results and iterate

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Launch Designs Users Love

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Figma gives you the power to design and prototype rapidly, while Optimal gives you the insights to make sure those designs actually work for real users. Together, they create a workflow built on real insights, not guesswork.

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By testing early and often, teams can reduce risk, build confidence in their designs, and move into development knowing their work has already been validated by users. Gather insights quickly, collaborate more effectively, and keep projects moving forward with evidence-backed decisions.

Ready to validate your next Figma prototype? Use Optimal as part of your workflow and start testing with real users today.

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!
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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.

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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.

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What We’re Working On Next

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

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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.

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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.

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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. 
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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.