From Design to Decision: Unlock Deeper Insights with Video Recording for Prototype Testing

We’re excited to launch our video recording functionality for prototype testing, enabling you to dive deeper into the “why” behind user actions and empowering you to make data-informed decisions faster and with greater confidence.

See User Actions Come to Life

Capture the nuance of user interactions with screen, audio, and/or video recording. With Optimal’s video recording feature, you can:
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• Understand Intent: Watch users in action to reveal their decision-making process.
• Spot Friction Points: Identify moments of hesitation, confusion, or frustration.
• Test Your Ideas: Leverage user insights to make informed decisions before moving forward.‍
• Track Task Success: Combine video insights with quantitative data to understand what works and what needs refinement.
• Share Compelling Insights: Use recordings to drive alignment across your team and key stakeholders.
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Drive Value with Video Recordings and Prototype Testing

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‍By combining video recordings with prototype testing, you can unlock actionable insights that make a real impact. 
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Here’s how they drive value for your initiatives:
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• Higher Conversion Rates: Optimized designs based on real user feedback lead to increased engagement.
• Greater User Satisfaction: Tested prototypes help to better align your experiences with user needs and expectations.
• Reduced Development Costs: Catch issues early to avoid costly fixes later in the development process.
• Faster Time-to-Market: Resolve design flaws early to accelerate project timelines.
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Recruit the Right Participants for Richer Results‍

Optimal combines the power of video recording, participant recruitment, and a comprehensive UX insights and research platform to elevate your product and research process.
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Use Optimal’s recruitment service to quickly connect you with millions of people in 150+ countries ready to take part in your study. Our in-house team handles feasibility assessments, sends reminders and confirmations, reviews personalized study setups, and conducts human checks to ensure high quality participants to maximize the value of your video recordings.
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Thank you, Beta Testers‍

We’re grateful to our early adopters and beta testers for shaping the future of video recording and prototype testing. Based on your valuable feedback, we’ve made the following updates:
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Video recording updates

• Additional recording controls: You can now control whether to reject participants or forward a participant to a non-recording study link if they do not meet your recording criteria. 
• Translations: Set your study language and translate the recording instructions into 180+ languages.
• No video expirations: We’ve removed video expirations, ensuring your recordings remain accessible as long as you have an active Optimal subscription.
• Improved participant experience: We’ve improved the technology to reduce technical errors, creating a more reliable and user-friendly experience.
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Prototype testing updates

• Collapse/expand and move tasks: Increase prototype visibility by hiding or moving tasks, making it easier for participants to view and interact with more of your design, especially for mobile prototypes.
• Option to end tasks automatically: When enabled, tasks will automatically end 0.5 seconds after a participant reaches a correct destination, removing the need for participants to confirm that they've completed the task. This can improve the overall participant experience, removing steps and making tests faster to complete.
  
• Increased Figma frame limit:  We’ve increased the Figma frame limit from 30 to 100 frames to support larger, more complex prototypes.
• Expanded task results: Task path results now indicated completed and skipped tasks for better analysis.
• Time-saving improvements: Auto-select the starting screen after importing a Figma prototype, and enjoy task selection persistence across tabs in the analysis view.
• Enhanced security: We’ve updated Figma authorization for expanded security for your prototypes.
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Ready to unlock the power of video recording?
Get started with a prototype test in Optimal or visit our help documentation to learn more.

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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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Dashboard & Templates Library
We’re working to make research more accessible for everyone with the release of 15+ new templates designed to help Optimal users get started quickly. No matter which team you’re on, these use-case focused, ready-to-use templates will set you on the fast track. Use them to  preview the participant experience or clone the recommended study and tailor for your own use. 

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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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Study Creation Enhancements

Optimal will continue to improve on the new Study Flow to make study creation faster and intuitive. You’ll also gain greater flexibility with customizable sections. These upcoming updates are designed to empower you to create dynamic, tailored study experiences for different audiences, helping you unlock more valuable insights with ease. 
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With custom sections, you’ll be able to organize surveys and questions into distinct sections, such as demographics or product usage, to create a more structured and engaging study. These custom sections allow you to easily add, rename, reorder, duplicate, and move questions between sections.

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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.

The user research landscape has changed dramatically over the last 5 years, but not all of the platforms in the space have kept pace with each other. One of the biggest options in the market, UserTesting is an example of that. Our customers choose us because UserTesting relies on legacy infrastructure and outdated pricing models, whereas they feel that Optimal represents the next generation of research platforms, built for modern teams that are prioritizing agility, insight quality, and cost efficiency over enterprise bloat.

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What are the biggest differences between Optimal and UserTesting?

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Cost

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• ‍UserTesting is Expensive: UserTesting charges $5,000-$10,000 per user annually plus additional session-based fees, creating unpredictable costs that escalate the more research your team does. This means that teams often face budget surprises when conducting longer studies or more frequent research.‍
• Optimal has Transparent Pricing: Optimal offers flat-rate pricing without per-seat fees or session units, enabling teams to scale research sustainbly. Our transparent pricing eliminates budget surprises and enables predictable research ops planning.

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Return on Investment

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• Justifying the Cost of UserTesting: UserTesting's high costs and complex pricing structure make it hard to prove the ROI, particularly for teams conducting frequent research or extended studies that trigger additional session fees.
• The Best Value in the Market: Optimal's straightforward pricing and comprehensive feature set deliver measurable ROI. We offer 90% of the features in UserTesting at 10% of the price while offering less complexity and pricing that scales with your needs.

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Technology Evolution

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• UserTesting is Struggling to Modernize: UserTesting's platform shows signs of aging infrastructure, with slower performance and difficulty integrating modern research methodologies. Their technology advancement has lagged behind industry innovation.
• Optimal is Purpose-Built for Modern Research: Optimal has invested heavily over the last few years in features for contemporary research needs, including AI-powered analysis and automation capabilities.

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UserZoom Integration Challenges

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• UserZoom Integration Challenges: UserTesting's acquisition of UserZoom has created platform challenges that continue to impact user experience. UserTesting customers report confusion navigating between legacy systems and inconsistent feature availability and quality.
• Built by Researchers for Researchers: Optimal has built from the ground up a single, cohesive platform without the complexity of merged acquisitions, ensuring consistent user experience and seamless workflow integration.

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Participant Panel Quality

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• Poor Quality, In-House Panel: UserTesting's massive scale has led to participant quality issues, with researchers reporting difficulty finding high-quality participants for specialized research needs and inconsistent participant engagement.
• Flexibility = Quality: Optimal prioritizes flexibility for our users, allowing our customers to bring their own participants for free or use our high-quality panels, with over 100+ million verified participants across 150+ countries who meet strict quality standards.

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Customer Support Experience

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• Impersonal, Enterprise Support: Users report that UserTesting's large organizational structure creates slower support cycles, outsourced customer service, and reduced responsiveness to individual customer needs.‍
• Agile, Personal Support: At Optimal we pride ourselves on our fast, human support with dedicated account management and direct access to product teams, ensuring fast and personalized support.

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The Future of User Research Platforms

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The research platform landscape has evolved from basic testing tools to comprehensive user insight platforms. Today, teams responsible for reserach require platforms that have evolved to include:

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• Advanced Analytics: AI-powered analysis that transforms data into actionable insights
• Flexible Recruitment: Options for both panel and custom participant recruitment
• Transparent Pricing: Predictable costs that scale with your needs
• Responsive Development: Platforms that evolve based on user feedback and industry trends

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Platforms Need to Evolve for Modern Research Needs

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When selecting a vendor, teams need to choose a platform with the functionality that their teams need today, but also one that will also grow with the needs of your team in the future. Scalable, adaptable platforms enable research teams to:

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• Scale Efficiently: Grow research activities without exponential cost increaeses
• Embrace Innovation: Integrate new research methodologies and analysis techniques as well as emerging tools like AI 
• Maintain Standards: Ensure consistent participant, data and tool quality as the platform evolves
• Stay Responsive: Adapt to changing business needs and market conditions

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The Bottom Line

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Research teams today need platforms that have successfully adapted to contemporary challenges: cost efficiency, rapid user insight and seamless workflow integration. The key is choosing a platform that continues to evolve rather than one constrained by outdated infrastructure and complex, legacy pricing models.

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Don't let inflexible platform limitations restrict your research. Choose a platform designed to grow with your research team's evolving needs.

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Ready to see how leading brands including Lego, Netflix and Nike achieve superior research outcomes? Experience how Optimal's evolved platform delivers user insights that adapt to your team's growing needs.

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