What to Ask: 5 Ways to Get Started with MCP for Your Research Repository

Great design decisions are grounded in evidence. But finding the right evidence isn't always easy when it's spread across multiple teams, usability tests, interviews, and surveys.

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Instead of searching through reports or asking teammates if research already exists, Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets you ask questions about your research repository in natural language from AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Cursor.

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Whether you're designing a new feature, iterating on a prototype, or preparing for a design review, MCP helps you quickly bring user evidence into your workflow.

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Here are seven ways UX, product, and experience designers can use MCP throughout the design process.

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1. Start every design project with what users already told you

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Before opening Figma, understand what users are trying to accomplish, where they're struggling, and what your team has already learned.

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Try asking:

• What have we already learned about onboarding?
• What usability issues have we identified in checkout?
• What are users trying to achieve when managing their account settings?
• What research should I review before redesigning navigation?

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Designer workflow

Before kicking off a redesign, ask MCP to summarize existing research. Use the findings to define design goals, identify constraints, and prioritize the problems worth solving before creating your first wireframe.

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2. Validate design concepts before investing time in high-fidelity designs

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As ideas begin to take shape, use previous research to pressure-test your thinking. MCP can surface similar studies, recurring usability issues, and participant feedback that helps you refine concepts earlier.

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Try asking:

• Have we tested a similar design before?
• What patterns have users struggled with in previous prototypes?
• What should we avoid repeating?
• Which usability findings should influence this design?

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Designer workflow

While exploring concepts in Figma, keep an AI assistant open alongside your design files. Ask questions as you work so previous research continuously informs design decisions instead of becoming something you review once at the beginning.

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3. Write stronger design rationale

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Design reviews often involve explaining why a particular solution was chosen. Use MCP to find supporting evidence from previous studies.

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Try asking:

• Find participant quotes supporting a simplified navigation.
• What evidence suggests users prefer this workflow?
• Which usability studies identified this problem?
• Show examples of participants struggling with this interaction.

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Designer workflow

Use participant quotes, findings, and usability observations directly in design specs, PRDs, or design review presentations to help stakeholders understand the reasoning behind your decisions.

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4. Spot UX patterns across products and releases

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Looking across multiple studies can reveal broader experience patterns. MCP can identify recurring pain points, emerging behaviours, and themes that may influence future design priorities.

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Try asking:

• What usability issues appear across multiple product areas?
• Compare findings from our last five prototype tests.
• Which friction points have become more common over time?
• What navigation issues keep appearing across studies?

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Designer workflow

Before planning a larger redesign, review patterns across multiple past studies. These recurring themes often highlight systemic UX issues that individual projects miss.

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5. Prepare for design critiques and stakeholder reviews

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Strong design presentations combine visual solutions with user evidence. Use MCP to generate summaries tailored to your audience.

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Try asking:

• Summarize the research supporting this redesign.
• What are the three biggest user pain points?
• Create an executive summary for stakeholders.
• What customer evidence supports prioritizing this work?

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Designer workflow

Generate concise summaries before design critiques, roadmap discussions, or leadership reviews, then pair them with your prototypes to show both the solution and the evidence behind it.

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6. Plan better usability tests

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Designers frequently need to validate prototypes, but not every question requires a brand new study. MCP helps identify what has already been answered and where genuine knowledge gaps remain.

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Try asking:

• What questions about this flow are still unanswered?
• What assumptions should we validate?
• Which participant groups haven't been represented?
• What tasks should we include in our next prototype test?

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Designer workflow

Review previous findings before writing test tasks. Build studies that extend existing knowledge instead of repeating research your team has already completed.

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7. Bring research into the tools you already use

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Research is most valuable when it appears alongside the work you're already doing. With MCP, your repository becomes accessible from AI tools that support everyday design work.

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Potential workflows

• Generate a design brief from previous research before starting a new feature.
• Draft usability findings directly into Confluence or Notion.
• Format ideas into sticky notes and prep for a design sprint with Miro or Mural.
• Create presentation-ready summaries for design reviews.
• Turn research findings into product requirements for engineering.
• Compare proposed designs against historical usability findings.
• Ask follow-up research questions while designing in Figma with an AI assistant open alongside your work.

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Instead of switching between repositories, documents, and reports, research becomes part of your design process.

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Designing with confidence

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The best design decisions aren't based on intuition alone; they're informed by a deep understanding of user behavior.

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MCP makes it easier to bring research into everyday design work, helping you move from evidence to action faster. Whether you're exploring concepts, validating ideas, preparing stakeholder reviews, or planning usability tests, you can use MCP to help your research repository become an active design partner. 

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Book a demo or log into your account to get set up with MCP. 

Research data becomes even more valuable when it can be used alongside the other data your business relies on.

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The Optimal API gives organizations secure, read-only access to their Optimal research data, so you can connect research with the tools and workflows your teams already use. Bring research data into a data warehouse, build dashboards, automate reporting, or combine research results with product analytics and business metrics.

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Instead of manually exporting research data or relying on static reports, you can create a more connected way to access and use your research at scale.

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What is the Optimal API?

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The Optimal API is a secure, read-only way to access research data from Optimal programmatically. It allows your developers, IT or systems administrators, and API or integration managers to connect Optimal with other business systems.

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For example, you can use the API to:

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• Centralize research data in a data warehouse such as Snowflake.
• Build research dashboards in Power BI, Tableau, Looker, or other business intelligence tools.
• Automate reporting so research data can flow into recurring reports and workflows.
• Create an internal research repository that brings research data together in one place.
• Connect research with business data to explore research alongside product analytics, customer data, or business metrics.
• Build custom applications and integrations around your organization's research data.

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Why connect your research data?

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As research programs grow, manually exporting and combining data can become time-consuming. Connecting research data to your existing data infrastructure can make it easier for teams to find, analyze, and share research across the organization.

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For example, a research team could send Optimal data to Snowflake and combine it with product analytics. A research operations team could build a centralized dashboard showing research activity across teams. A data or analytics team could automate recurring reports instead of relying on researchers to export data manually.

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The API helps make research data more accessible beyond the research team.

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What research data can you access?

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The initial release of the Optimal API provides read-only access to:

• Research activities
• Research metadata
• Participants
• Responses and results
• Insights and AI-generated insights

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This means you can retrieve research data from Optimal without changing or deleting it through the API.

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Who can set up the Optimal API?

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Depending on how your organization manages technology and integrations, the person setting up access to the API might be a:

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• Developer
• IT or systems administrator
• API or integration manager
• Data or analytics team member

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You don't need to be the person building the integration to create the API application. The organization admin is responsible for creating the application and securely sharing its credentials with the appropriate person.

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How to keep your API credentials secure

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Your Client Secret works like a password for your API application. Treat it as sensitive information and only give access to people or systems that need it.

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Follow these best practices:

• Never share your Client Secret publicly. Don't send it through Slack, email, direct messages, or other unsecured channels.
• Use a password manager or secrets manager. Store credentials in a secure tool such as 1Password or your organization's approved secrets manager.
• Don't add secrets to source code. Never commit your Client Secret to a Git repository or include it in configuration files, screenshots, or other files that could be shared.
• Limit access to credentials. Only give API credentials to the people or systems that need them.
• Make application ownership clear. Use a descriptive application name so your team can identify what the application is used for and who manages it.
• Delete applications you no longer use. Removing unused applications helps reduce unnecessary access.

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Build a more connected research workflow

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The Optimal API makes it possible to bring research data into the systems your organization already relies on.

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Whether you're building a research repository, connecting research to business intelligence, automating reporting, or combining research with product data, the API can help reduce manual data handling and make research easier to use across your organization.

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The Optimal API is now currently available to multi-team organizations on Enterprise plans.

Imagine you've just joined a new research team. There is a vast amount of research in the repository. Hundreds of interviews, usability tests, surveys, and notes. Everyone tells you, "We've probably researched that already," but nobody knows when or where.

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Instead of manually searching projects or asking around, Model Context Protocol (MCP) lets you ask questions about studies conducted in Optimal and instantly surface the evidence you need.

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Here are practical ways UX researchers can use MCP with Optimal to understand past research, accelerate new studies, and uncover insights across their repository.

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1. Get up to speed on past and current research

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One of the best ways to use MCP is understanding what's already known. Instead of combing through different studies, ask MCP to summarize existing knowledge before planning your next study.

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Try asking:

• Based on the research I’ve run in Optimal, what are the biggest UX opportunities for our product?
• Summarize the key findings from checkout research over the past year.
• What usability issues have been identified most frequently?
• What research should I read first to understand this project?

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2. Define your next research study

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Before creating your next study, writing discussion guides or recruiting participants, check what questions have already been answered and which gaps remain.

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MCP can help identify opportunities for follow-up research and prevent unnecessary duplication.

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Try asking:

• What questions about account creation are still unanswered?
• What themes need further investigation?
• Based on previous studies, what should our next usability test focus on?
• What hypotheses should we validate next?

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3. Find supporting evidence faster

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Whether you're preparing a presentation or writing a report, MCP can help to surface quotes, observations, participant metadata, and findings in seconds.

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Try asking:

• Find participant quotes describing frustration during onboarding.
• Show examples of navigation issues from recent usability tests.
• How many participants completed this study on mobile?
• Which sessions mentioned difficulty finding pricing information?
• Pull task completion rates from all prototype tests in the Dashboard project as a CSV.

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4. Discover research before starting from scratch

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One of the easiest ways to waste research effort is repeating work that's already been done. Use MCP to explore what's already in your repository before creating a new study.

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Try asking:

• What research already exists about navigation?
• Have we previously tested this feature?
• What have we already learned about search?
• Which studies relate to account settings?

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5. Identify patterns across multiple studies

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The biggest insights often emerge when you zoom out. Instead of reviewing studies individually, MCP can synthesize findings across projects to reveal recurring themes, behaviours, and pain points.

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Try asking:

• What pain points appear consistently across checkout studies?
• Compare findings from our last five usability tests.
• What themes have become more common over the past six months?
• Which usability issues keep appearing regardless of product area?

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6. Create stakeholder-ready summaries

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Research is most valuable when it's easy to share. Use MCP to turn large volumes of research into concise summaries or visualizations tailored to your audience.

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Try asking:

• Summarize this quarter's most important customer insights.
• Create an executive summary for leadership.
• Create a pie chart with a breakdown of onboarding studies by study method. 
• What are the three biggest opportunities we should prioritize?
• Write a summary suitable for our product team.

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7. Bring research into your existing workflows

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Connect it with the AI tools and platforms your team already uses so research becomes part of everyday decision-making.

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Examples include:

• Ask research questions and post insights directly into Slack.
• Create a new page in Notion summarizing research findings.
• Draft insight summaries for Google Docs and Confluence.

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Best practices for getting the best answers from MCP

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Like any AI assistant, the quality of the output depends on the context you provide. A few simple habits can make a big difference.

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Start with a clear goal

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Rather than asking broad questions, explain what you're trying to achieve. Instead of Tell me about onboarding.

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Try: I'm planning a usability study on onboarding. What problems have previous research uncovered that we should investigate further?

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Narrow your search when appropriate

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Large repositories can contain a wealth of research.

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Specify:

• Study tool and/or project
• Research method
• Time period
• Team
• Participant segment

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For example: Summarize usability studies about checkout conducted during the past 12 months.

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Decide whether you need one study or many

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Sometimes you need detailed findings from a single study. Other times you're looking for patterns across dozens of studies. Tell MCP which perspective you want.

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Ask follow-up questions

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Treat MCP like a research partner rather than a search engine. For example:

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• Can you show supporting participant quotes?
• Which studies contributed to this finding?
• Are there conflicting findings?
• What evidence supports this recommendation?

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Tell MCP how you want the answer

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Different audiences need different outputs.

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Ask for:

• Bullet-point summaries
• Executive briefings
• Presentation-ready insights
• Charts
• Tables
• Research reports
• Action items
• Product recommendations

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MCP helps researchers spend less time hunting for information and more time generating insights that move products forward. 

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How will you use MCP with your Optimal data? Whether you're uncovering past insights, planning new studies, or connecting research with the rest of your tools, we'd love to hear how you're putting it to work.