The Next Evolution of Optimal Recruitment: More Control. More Precision. More Confidence.

We recently hosted a live webinar introducing Optimal's new Usability Testing tool, a powerful solution that brings multiple research methods together in a single study, helping you get better insights, faster.

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Looking for the highlights? We've rounded up answers to the most common questions from the session.

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What is Usability Testing?

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Optimal's new Usability Testing tool is a mixed-methods research tool that brings Prototype Testing, Live Site Testing, and Surveys into a single, end-to-end study workflow. Instead of treating each method as its own initiative, you can combine them inside a single study to allow participants to move naturally between tasks, experiences, and questions.

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With this tool, you can compare multiple prototypes side by side, benchmark a current live experience against a redesigned concept, evaluate a competitor's experience, and more. And researchers get everything analyzed in one place with AI-powered summaries, task results, video clips, and evidence-backed insights surfaced automatically.

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Is Usability Testing supported for mobile testing?

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Yes, participants can complete Usability Testing studies on mobile devices using their mobile browser or the Optimal Participant App. If screen recording is required, participants are prompted to download the Optimal Participant App, available for both iOS and Android. 

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Do you have to use multiple methods, or can you run just one?

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You can keep it simple and run a single survey, a standalone prototype test, or a live site session on its own. Or, mix methods or run multiple of the same method, such as multiple prototypes or live website tests in one study. The tool supports however your study needs to be shaped.

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Can you run bilingual studies?

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Usability Testing currently supports over 30 languages enabling what participants see and guiding how AI models interpret responses, generate summaries, identify themes, and surface insights. Today, studies are configured around a single language, so participants are expected to respond in the chosen language. That said, multilingual study support is something we're exploring for our roadmap.

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Are participants recruited once across all methods, or separately for each?

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Just once. From the participant's perspective, this looks and feels like a single study regardless of how many methods are included. They move through the experience naturally from start to finish.

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To what extent can sections and questions be randomized?

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Section-level randomization shuffles the order of any sections, while question-level randomization works within a specific section, shuffling the order of tasks and follow-up questions. Both are supported, giving researchers the flexibility to reduce order bias, particularly useful when comparing multiple experiences.

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Can you test multiple prototypes within the same study?

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Yes, with no limitations on the number of prototypes you can link to a single study so you can add multiple Figma prototype sections and connect a different prototype to each one.

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Can you reorder sections and questions in a study?

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Given that Usability Testing studies can grow complex, the ability to reorder things quickly was a priority. You can reorder individual tasks and questions within a section, and sections themselves by dragging them in the Build panel.

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How effectively can Usability Testing scale across a business?

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Scaling research isn't just about running more studies, it's about helping more people across the business access insights, understand them, and use them to make decisions. With Usability Testing, product managers, designers, and stakeholders can quickly understand what happened and why without having to see hours of recording through the automatically generated highlight reels, key quotes, and transcripts.

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Watch the full webinar

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If you want to experience the full walkthrough, demo, and Q&A, watch the recording to see Usability Testing in action and pick up tips and best practices straight from the session.

👉 Watch the full webinar here.

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A well-maintained participant panel is more than a time-saver. It sets your team up for better research from day one. The people you recruit and how you track, segment, and manage those relationships over time directly shapes how reliable your findings are.  

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With the right setup in place, you can move forward with confidence, knowing that these participants meet your criteria, aren’t overused, and can bring fresh perspectives to each study.

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Tools like Rally UXR bring that structure to participant recruitment. It helps you build and manage your own participant panel, keep track of consent and contact history, coordinate logistics, and stay on top of all the moving parts. You can also see things like incentive history and email engagement, making it much easier to decide who to invite and when.

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But recruitment is just the starting point. The real value comes next: running the research and turning participant feedback into insights you can actually use.

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Using Rally + Optimal together

Whether you’re running unmoderated studies, testing designs, navigation, or content, or conducting usability testing calls, having the right research tools in place is critical. If you’re already using Rally, pairing it with Optimal can connect the dots from recruitment through to insights, without adding friction to your workflow.
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You can also use Optimal’s on-demand or custom managed recruitment services, though Rally’s strength lies in building your own custom panel and database.
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Here’s how to combine Rally and Optimal into a smooth, efficient research workflow.
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Start with intentional recruitment

Define your participant criteria in Rally. Use screening questions not just to qualify participants. Think beyond “does this person qualify?” and start building segments you can reuse: power users vs. casual users, returning users vs. first-timers, people familiar with the old design vs. new. These segments can make it easier to run focused studies and compare results over time.

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Build your study in parallel

A simple shift that makes a big difference: don’t wait. Build your study in Optimal before sending invites from Rally. This ensures that when participants are ready, the link can be dropped into Rally, and distribution happens the moment you're ready.

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Use the strengths of each platform

Rally handles the relationship and profile management: who's been invited, who's confirmed, who needs a reminder, screener and survey history, consent forms, and more. Optimal handles the research: collecting quantitative and qualitative data, visualising patterns, quantifying usability issues, automating insights with AI, and surfacing the metrics and insights that actually answer your research question. 

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With Optimal, you can immediately put Rally-recruited participants into studies including:
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• Prototype testing
• Live site testing 
• Card sorting
• Tree testing
• First-click testing
• Surveys
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Keep your insights in one place‍‍

When it comes to research, scattered insights = lost impact. Using Optimal as your central hub for results, recordings, and analysis makes it easier to share findings with your team and stakeholders, track progress over time, and back up decisions with real evidence. 
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The tools you use for recruitment and the tools you use for research aren't just operational choices. They shape your research culture. When recruitment and research are both well-structured, everything runs more smoothly. Teams that invest in structure on both ends of the workflow tend to produce research that's faster, more credible, and more likely to influence decisions. 
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Rally and Optimal are powerful on their own. Together, they create a workflow that’s scalable, insight-driven, and built for continuous discovery.

If you're not yet using Optimal, you can start a free trial or book a demo.

When we spoke to study creators about what can cause a study to fail, the answer was rarely a methodology problem. It was recruitment.

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If you've ever watched a study stall because the right participants didn't show up, you already know the problem we're trying to solve. The study is ready. The tasks are written. Stakeholders are waiting. And then recruitment breaks down. 

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Participants trickle in too slowly. The participant quality isn’t quite right. The timeline shifts. Confidence in the findings edges downward.

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Recruitment: a moving target

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Recruitment has always been a moving target. There are endless ways to improve it – through reach, participant quality, fraud prevention, and ease of use. 

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As part of our ongoing work to strengthen our recruitment offering, we’ve reimagined self-service recruitment at Optimal. We’ve taken a closer look at the experience and focused on giving research teams more options, greater control, and confidence in participant quality when recruiting participants.

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What we heard from research teams

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Across the teams we spoke to, several consistent themes emerged. Quality was a persistent concern. The issues were usually about fit. Participants sometimes didn’t meaningfully engage with the tasks or dropped off mid-session. 

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"Niche" participants were referenced often as well. What was usually meant wasn't rare profiles but it was a combination of specific targeting and filters applied at once. Seniority plus industry plus behaviour plus location. Multiple criteria that some existing tools just didn't handle well.

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On the coordination side, we heard a consistent ask: researchers want to know who they've already spoken to. They don't want to contact the same people repeatedly without realizing it. They're tired of managing participant lists manually just to avoid that problem.

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In short: speed matters, but predictability, visibility, and participant quality matter more.

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Built for real-world studies

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We've rebuilt Optimal’s self-service recruitment from the ground up.

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Participant Profiles: more flexibility and control

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The centerpiece of the new experience is Participant Profiles. Build a profile for exactly who you need from demographics, location (down to the city), job title, seniority, company size, industry, B2B, language, and more. You’ll also have the ability to:

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• Run multiple profiles in a single study. If you need senior decision-makers from the UK and individual contributors from the US, you can define both profiles with separate quotas and recruit them simultaneously for the same study.
  
  
• Set multiple quotas per profile. Define not just who you need, but how many of each. So if your study needs 30 brand managers and 20 operations managers, you can recruit for both.
  
  
• Set exclusion controls. One of the clearest things we heard: researchers don't want to keep recruiting the same people. It can create a bias in their data, but managing participant history manually can be resource-intensive and tedious. Exclusion controls let you automatically exclude participants who've taken part in your studies within a set period; for example, the last three months.

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More panels, more reach

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To help research teams reach the right participants with greater reliability, Optimal’s self-service recruitment now draws from multiple panels. This increases the pool of available participants across regions and segments, giving research teams more opportunities to find the right fit even for more specific or multi-criteria profiles.

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Access millions of participants across over 150 countries, with expanded targeting options beyond general population samples, including B2B audiences.

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Visibility and predictability, from setup to launch

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Before you launch, you'll see an estimated fill time, credit cost, and a feasibility check based on your profile and quotas. After launch, live recruitment progress sits alongside your study responses. You can see exactly how each profile quota is filling in real time.
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Why this matters now

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The teams we spoke to are running more ambitious studies than ever – recorded sessions, concept tests, and studies that sit between a quick survey and a full moderated interview. These studies demand reliable, targeted, well-matched participants. Recruitment is often the deciding factor in whether a study succeeds.

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Recruitment has always been the part of research that feels the least in your control. We want to change that, not adding more complexity, but by giving you the right tools to recruit exactly who you need.

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You should be able to see what's happening, trust that the right people are coming through, and stay focused on your study. Get the confidence in your participants so you can focus on what comes next: the decisions that matter.

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Profiles are now available in Optimal’s Usability Testing tool and will be rolling out across the rest of the platform.

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Explore the new recruitment experience in your account or book a demo.