Speed Up Your Design Workflow with AI Prototyping + Optimal

A year ago, we looked at the user research market and made a decision.

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We saw product teams shipping faster than ever while research tools stayed stuck in time. We saw researchers drowning in manual work, waiting on vendor emails, stitching together fragmented tools. We heard "should we test this?" followed by "never mind, we already shipped."

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The dominant platforms got comfortable. We didn't.

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Today, we're excited to announce Optimal 3.0, the result of refusing to accept the status quo and building the fresh alternative teams have been asking for.

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The Problem: Research Platforms Haven't Evolved

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The gap between product velocity and research velocity has never been wider. The situation isn't sustainable. And it's not the researcher's fault. The tools are the problem. They’re: 

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• Built for specialists only - Complex interfaces that gatekeep research from the rest of the team
• Fragmented ecosystems - Separate tools for recruitment, testing, and analysis that don't talk to each other
• Data in silos - Insights trapped study-by-study with no way to search across everything
• Zero integration - Platforms that force you to abandon your workflow instead of fitting into it

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These platforms haven't changed because they don't have to, so we set out to challenge them.

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Our Answer: A Complete Ecosystem for Research Velocity

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Optimal 3.0 isn't an incremental update to the old way of doing things. It's a fundamental rethinking of what a research platform should be.

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Research For All, Not Just Researchers.

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For 18 years, we've believed research should be accessible to everyone, not just specialists. Optimal 3.0 takes that principle further.

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Unlimited seats. Zero gatekeeping.

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Designers can validate concepts without waiting for research bandwidth. PMs can test assumptions without learning specialist tools. Marketers can gather feedback without procurement nightmares. Research shouldn't be rationed by licenses or complexity. It should be a shared capability across your entire team.

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A Complete Ecosystem in One Place.

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Stop stitching together point solutions.Optimal 3.0 gives you everything you need in one platform:

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Recruitment Built In Access millions of verified participants worldwide without the vendor tag. Target by demographics, behaviors, and custom screeners. Launch studies in minutes, not days. No endless email chains. No procurement delays.

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Learn more about Recruitment

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Testing That Adapts to You

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• Live Site Testing: Test any URL, your production site, staging, or competitors, without code or developer dependencies
• Prototype Testing: Connect Figma and go from design to insights in minutes
• Mobile Testing: Native screen recordings that capture the real user experience
• Enhanced Traditional Methods: Card sorting, tree testing, first-click tests, the methodologically sound foundations we built our reputation on

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Learn more about Live Site Testing

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AI-Powered Analysis (With Control) Interview analysis used to take weeks. We've reduced it to minutes.

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Our AI automatically identifies themes, surfaces key quotes, and generates summaries, while you maintain full control over the analysis.

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As one researcher told us: "What took me 4 weeks to manually analyze now took me 5 minutes."

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This isn't about replacing researcher judgment. It's about amplifying it. The AI handles the busywork, tagging, organizing, timestamping. You handle the strategic thinking and judgment calls. That's where your value actually lives.

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Learn more about Optimal Interviews

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Chat Across All Your Data Your research data is now conversational.

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Ask questions and get answers instantly, backed by actual video evidence from your studies. Query across multiple Interview studies at once. Share findings with stakeholders complete with supporting clips.

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Every insight comes with the receipts. Because stakeholders don't just need insights, they need proof.

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A Dashboard Built for Velocity See all your studies, all your data, in one place. Track progress across your entire team. Jump from question to insight in seconds. Research velocity starts with knowing what you have.

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Explore the new dashboard

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Integration Layer

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Optimal 3.0 fits your workflow. It doesn't dominate it. We integrate with the tools you already use, Figma, Slack, your existing tech stack, because research shouldn't force you to abandon how you work.

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What Didn't Change: Methodological Rigor

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Here's what we didn't do: abandon the foundations that made teams trust us.

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Card sorting, tree testing, first-click tests, surveys, the methodologically sound tools that Amazon, Google, Netflix, and HSBC have relied on for years are all still here. Better than ever.

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We didn't replace our roots. We built on them.

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18 years of research methodology, amplified by modern AI and unified in a complete ecosystem.

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Why This Matters Now

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Product development isn't slowing down. AI is accelerating everything. Competitors are moving faster. Customer expectations are higher than ever.

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Research can either be a bottleneck or an accelerator.

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The difference is having a platform that:

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• Makes research accessible to everyone (not just specialists)
• Provides a complete ecosystem (not fragmented point solutions)
• Amplifies judgment with AI (instead of replacing it)
• Integrates with workflows (instead of forcing new ones)
• Lets you search across all your data (not trapped in silos)

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Optimal 3.0 is built for research that arrives before the decision is made. Research that shapes products, not just documents them. Research that helps teams ship confidently because they asked users first.

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A Fresh Alternative

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We're not trying to be the biggest platform in the market.

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We're trying to be the best alternative to the clunky tools that have dominated for years.

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Amazon, Google, Netflix, Uber, Apple, Workday, they didn't choose us because we're the incumbent. They chose us because we make research accessible, fast, and actionable.

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"Overall, each release feels like the platform is getting better." — Lead Product Designer at Flo

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"The one research platform I keep coming back to." — G2 Review

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What's Next

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This launch represents our biggest transformation, but it's not the end. It's a new beginning.

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We're continuing to invest in:

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• AI capabilities that amplify (not replace) researcher judgment
• Platform integrations that fit your workflow
• Methodological innovations that maintain rigor while increasing speed
• Features that make research accessible to everyone

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Our goal is simple: make user research so fast and accessible that it becomes impossible not to include users in every decision.

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See What We've Built

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If you're evaluating research platforms and tired of the same old clunky tools, we'd love to show you the alternative.

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Book a demo or start a free trial

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The platform that turns "should we?" into "we did."

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Welcome to Optimal 3.0.

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User interviews provide some of the richest insights a product team can uncover. But turning hours of recordings and transcripts into clear insights can often be slow and manual without the right tools.

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With automated insights and AI Chat in Optimal Interviews, you can accelerate that entire workflow, from extracting insights from interview recordings to transforming them into outputs that fit directly into the tools your team already works in.

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Instead of spending hours summarizing transcripts and translating research into stakeholder updates, AI Chat helps you quickly generate structured outputs for documentation, tickets, and decision-making.

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Deliver Interview Insights Directly into the Tools Your Team Uses

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AI Chat can surface key themes, quotes, and patterns across participant recordings. Once insights are identified, it can quickly transform them into formats your team already uses.

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You can control the output by specifying tone, length, structure, and level of detail directly in your prompt. The more explicit you are about the format you want, the better the output.

Simply specify the details of the deliverable you want, and AI Chat can structure the output for documentation, planning, and product tools.

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Here’s how teams can use AI Chat with some of the most common product, design, and research tools.
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Notion

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Notion is used by many teams for documentation, knowledge bases, product planning, and research repositories.

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Example AI Chat prompts

• Turn these interview insights into a structured Notion research summary with sections for Key Findings, Supporting Quotes, and Recommendations.
• Create a Notion page outline summarizing onboarding interview insights with headings and bullet points.
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Jira

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Jira is a widely used issue tracking and project management platform that product and engineering teams rely on to manage work, track bugs, and plan development tasks.

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Research insights often lead directly to product improvements, and AI Chat can translate insights into actionable tickets.

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Example AI Chat prompts

• Convert these interview insights into three Jira tickets including title, description, and acceptance criteria.
• Turn this usability issue into a Jira bug ticket.
• Create a Jira epic summarizing onboarding improvements suggested by interview feedback.
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Linear

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Linear is a modern planning and issue tracking tool designed for fast-moving product teams. It’s often used for planning product work, managing projects and engineering tasks, and tracking product improvements.

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AI Chat can quickly convert insights into structured Linear issues.

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Example AI Chat prompts

• Convert these insights into Linear.app issues with clear titles, descriptions, and priority levels.
• Create a Linear.app issue summarizing the navigation problem identified in these interviews.
• Generate a set of tasks for the Linear.app addressing usability problems mentioned by participants.
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Confluence

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Confluence is a team collaboration and documentation platform used to share knowledge, publish research reports, and maintain internal documentation.

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AI Chat can help transform research findings into polished documentation ready for stakeholders.
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Example AI Chat prompts

• Turn these interview insights into a Confluence page with sections for Background, Findings, and Recommendations.
• Create a Confluence page explaining the usability issues uncovered in onboarding research.
• Turn opportunities to improve into concise post-it notes, with one key point per note, written in simple, scannable language to use in a Confluence whiteboard.
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Best practice tip: For cleaner, copy-and-paste-ready outputs, consider adding “Do not include citations.” to any of these suggested prompts.


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Accelerate the Impact of User Research

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By combining automated interview insights with AI Chat, teams can quickly move from recordings to structured insights, and share them in formats that resonate with internal teams and stakeholders.

This makes it easier to clearly communicate what users are saying, build alignment across product, design, and engineering, get buy-in, and turn research insights into decisions that teams are ready to support and action.

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As we close out 2025, we’ve been reflecting on what we’ve achieved together and where we’re headed next. 

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We’re proud to have supported customers in 45+ countries and nearly 400 cities, powering insights for teams at LEGO, Google, Apple, Nike, and many more. Over the last 12 months alone, more than 1.2 million participants completed studies on Optimal, shaping decisions that lead to better, more intuitive products and experiences around the world.

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We also strengthened and brought our community together. We attended 10 industry events, launched 4 leadership circle breakfasts for senior leaders in UX, product and design, and hosted 19 webinars, creating spaces to exchange ideas, share best practices, and explore the future of our changing landscape across topics like AI, automation, and accessibility.

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But the real story isn't in the numbers. It's in what we built to meet this moment.

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Entering a New Era for Insights

This year, we introduced a completely refreshed Optimal experience - a new Home and Studies interface designed to remove friction and help teams move faster. Clean, calm, intentional. Built not just to look modern, but to feel effortless.

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Optimal: From Discovery to Delivery

2025 was a milestone year: it marked the most significant expansion of the Optimal platform we think we’ve ever accomplished, with an introduction of automation powered by AI.

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Interviews

A transformative way to accelerate insights from interviews and videos through automated highlight reels, instant transcripts, summaries, and AI chat, eliminating days and weeks of manual work.

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Prototype Testing

Test designs early and often. Capture the nuance of user interactions with screen, audio, and/or video recording.

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Live Site Testing

Watch real people interact with any website and web app to see what’s actually happening. Your direct window into reality.

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We also continued enhancing our core toolkit, adding display logic to surveys and launching a new study creation flow to help teams move quickly and confidently across the platform.

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AI: Automate the Busywork, Focus on the Breakthroughs

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The next era of research isn't about replacing humans with AI. It’s about making room for the work humans do best. In 2025, we were intentional with where we added AI to Optimal, guided by our core principle to automate your research. Our ever-growing AI toolkit helps you:

• accelerate your analysis and uncover key insights with automated insights
• transcribe interviews 
• refine study questions for clarity
• dig deeper with AI chat 
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AI handles the tedious parts so you can focus on the meaningful ones.

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Looking Ahead: Raising the Bar for UX Research & Insights

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2025 built out our foundation. The next will raise the bar.

We're entering a phase where research and insights becomes:
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• faster to run
• easier to communicate
• available to everyone on your team
• and infinitely more powerful with AI woven throughout your workflow

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To everyone who ran a study, shared feedback, or pushed us to do better: thank you. You make Optimal what it is. Here’s to an even faster, clearer, more impactful year of insights.


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Onwards and upwards.