Great research has never been about speed alone. It’s about asking the right questions, understanding the context behind them, and uncovering insights that help teams make better decisions.

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Optimal's AI Interviewer is designed to support that process. It’s designed to work alongside researchers and teams, so you can move faster without losing the depth and human nuance that makes research valuable.

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Shaped by discovery

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Before building AI Interviewer, we spoke with and surveyed researchers, designers, and product teams to how they approach interviews today and where AI could genuinely help.

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What we heard was consistent:

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• Interviews are powerful, but time-intensive
• Scaling across time zones is challenging
• Synthesising conversations can take longer than running them
• And most importantly, context matters

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AI isn’t useful if it ignores how your team works. So instead of building a generic interviewer, we focused on building an AI Interviewer that fits into your current workflows and keeps researchers and teams in the driver's seat.

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Here’s what we learned and how we brought it to life with Optimal’s AI Interviewer.

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Context matters

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The best interviews start with a clear understanding of what you’re trying to uncover. With the AI Interviewer, you can add your research goals, audience details, company and product context, and additional context you want the AI to consider. This means the AI doesn’t just ask questions; it understands what you’re trying to learn and helps guide conversations in the right direction.

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The same context also powers AI insights, helping ensure summaries, key themes, and citations are relevant, accurate, and aligned with what you're trying to learn.

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Control the conversation

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One of the concerns with AI-led interviews is not having enough control. We’ve designed the AI Interviewer with this in mind.

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For each question, you can choose how deeply you would like the AI Interviewer to probe and follow-up. You decide when deeper exploration is valuable, how the conversation flows, and the AI can then carry this out on your behalf.
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Scale your research without losing depth

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AI Interviewer helps remove some of the barriers that make qualitative research difficult to scale. Use it to:

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• Scale research without hiring additional moderators
• Run interviews across different geographies and time zones
• Keep research moving, even when your team is offline
• Encourage more honest, candid feedback with an AI interviewer that participants may find easier to open up to

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This isn’t about replacing researchers. It’s about removing operational work so you can focus on higher-value work, like synthesis, storytelling, and decision-making.

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Richer insights, backed by evidence

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Every session comes with recordings, key summaries, and AI-generated insights with clear detailed evidence. Instead of reviewing hours of footage, you can quickly find what matters and confidently back it up. Review insights across your full study, or dive deeper into individual sessions and specific questions.

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On the roadmap: Once your interviews are complete, you can use AI Chat to go further with your data and explore patterns across sessions, ask follow-up questions, and validate assumptions with real evidence.
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Humans in the loop, by design

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Let’s address the elephant in the room. AI-led interviews aren’t something everyone is immediately comfortable with, and that’s fair. There are real limitations. 

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Some research scenarios require human sensitivity and judgment. Nuance, emotion, and edge cases still benefit from a human touch. Vulnerable populations and complex topics should always be handled with care. Optimal values a human-in-the-loop approach and know an AI Interviewer isn’t always suitable. With that in mind, we made sure that:

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• You define the context
• You control the structure
• You decide when and how to use it

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The AI Interviewer supports your work. It doesn’t replace your expertise.
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Early access: help shape what comes next

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AI Interviewer is now available in early access, and we’re continuing to learn from the teams using it. If you’re looking to scale your research without scaling your workload, run interviews across time zones, and spend less time on logistics and more time on insights, we’d love for you to try it.

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👉 Book a demo to see how it fits into your workflow.

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Already with Optimal? Register your interest for early access.

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Over the past year, we've spoken to more than a hundred people about the challenges of running interviews and moderated research.

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In a study of 90 researchers, designers, and product owners, 61% said they regularly conduct structured one-on-one interviews. Interviewing is still one of the most valuable methods available, but it still runs into challenges and barriers.

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Modern product teams are moving faster than ever, fueled by automation and AI, and research is expected to keep up. But sourcing, screening, scheduling, and managing participants can still slow everything down. Teams need a faster, more scalable way to find qualified participants without sacrificing quality.

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And while speed matters, teams told us something equally important: predictability and visibility. You want confidence that recruitment is progressing, participants are being vetted appropriately, and interviews will happen as planned.

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One workflow, from recruitment to insight

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With Optimal Interviews, you can already schedule sessions, automatically record interview sessions, get automated insights and highlight reels, chat with AI, and store your findings in a central repository. Now moderated recruitment is part of that same flow. 

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Everything lives in Optimal. The result is less admin, fewer handoffs, more visibility and control over your participants, and a smoother path from research question to actionable insight.

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What Moderated Recruitment looks like in Optimal: Predictability, visibility, and control

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In this next evolution of recruitment at Optimal, moderated recruitment gives teams greater visibility and control throughout the entire recruitment process.

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See exactly where your recruitment stands

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The Participant Management tab becomes your central hub for moderated recruitment. From here, you can:

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• Create and manage recruitment requests

• Track recruitment and individual participant progress in real time
• View active and previous recruitment orders

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Instead of wondering where recruitment stands, you'll always have a clear view of progress.

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Review applicants and choose your best fit

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As participants apply, you can review potential participants and determine who is the best fit for your study. Each applicant profile includes:

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• Characteristics match percentages
• Screener match percentages
• Application dates
• Participant information and profiles
• LinkedIn and social links
• Researcher notes and observations

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Get everything you need to make an informed decision. Review individual participant profiles, assess their suitability, and add notes. Choose your best match for your study, and maintain full control over who enters their study.

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Communicate directly with participants

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Need to follow up with applicants or confirm details before scheduling? Send messages directly from within the platform, no inbox-hopping required.

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Scheduling that works seamlessly with your recruitment

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Confirmed interviews are automatically added to your Optimal Interviews schedule, reducing admin and helping you stay organized. Everything works alongside your existing integrations so you can easily:

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• Add or remove interview sessions from your calendar
• Manage upcoming sessions
• Automatically record interviews
• Keep research activities centralized
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The result is a connected workflow that reduces friction from recruitment through to analysis.

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Get started with Moderated Recruitment

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Research teams are under increasing pressure to deliver insights quickly while maintaining rigor and participant quality. Moderated Recruitment helps strike that balance.

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By bringing screening and targeting, participant management, scheduling, interviewing, recording, and insight management together in one platform, teams can spend less time coordinating logistics and more time focusing on insights.

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Whether you're conducting customer discovery, concept testing, or usability interviews, Moderated Recruitment helps you move from recruitment to insight faster, with visibility, control, and confidence.

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Ready to see it in action? Explore Moderated Recruitment in Optimal Interviews.

Log in to see how it works or book a demo to learn more.

Coordinating user interviews shouldn’t feel like a full-time job. Between juggling calendars, chasing confirmations, and sending reminders, scheduling can be the hidden bottleneck in research velocity and quietly consume the time you actually want to spend talking to customers. 
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If you want to run more interviews and generate insights more consistently, simplifying your scheduling process is one of best ways to remove friction and streamline your workflow.
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Save time and streamline your workflow

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What does a simpler workflow look like? 

With a tool like Optimal’s Interviews Scheduler, you can:
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• Invite participants via a booking link or email
• View upcoming and completed sessions in one place
• Connect with tools you already use like Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams.
• Let participants reschedule themselves. No back-and-forth emails.
• Add collaborators and automatically notify everyone of changes.
• Set session limits and calendar buffers.
• Automate email invites, reminders, confirmations, and thank-you messages.
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It’s everything you need to manage interviews without the chaos.
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Calendar integrations: Avoid conflicts and save time

With the Interviews Scheduler, you can sync your availability with Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook in real time. Connect your own calendar or your team’s to ensure every busy slot is accounted for. Avoid double bookings, block out busy times, and keep everything in one place. 

Once set up, your availability automatically updates, and participants can book directly into open slots, eliminating the back-and-forth. Plus, depending on your preferences, your sessions will either sync directly to your calendar or come through as an .ics file in the confirmation email, saving you one more step.
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Seamless video conferencing integrations

The Interviews Scheduler integrates directly with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.

When someone books a session:

• A video link is automatically generated
• It’s added to the calendar invite
• Everyone receives confirmation details
• Sessions can be automatically recorded

No copying links. No switching between tools.
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Built for research teams

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The Interviews Scheduler isn’t just about booking time slots. It’s about removing friction from your research workflow.

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With integrations at its core, you can:

• Keep your calendar, video tools, and participants in sync
• Reduce manual coordination
• Eliminate scheduling errors
• Focus on insights instead of admin

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Whether you’re running one-off interviews or managing weekly research sprints, the Interviews Scheduler helps you move faster and stay organised.

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Ready to give it a try? Log in to your Optimal account and get started or book a demo to learn more.

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User interviews have always been one of the most trusted and powerful UX research methods. They give you something beyond dashboards or written surveys: real, in-depth conversations and context.

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But they’ve historically come with a cost – time, coordination, and a heavy lift to review recordings and turn videos into insights. Sometimes insights get buried. Recordings sit unused and research becomes challenging to revisit.

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In our recent webinar, we explored how that’s changing and how you can reduce the heavy lift of interview review, while building a research repository. 

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What is a research repository?

A research repository is a centralized system for storing, analyzing, and reusing research data, especially qualitative data like user interviews. It helps teams answer questions like what users said, what patterns emerged, and how past research can inform future decisions.
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For interviews, this means:

• Storing recordings and transcripts
• Organizing insights and themes
• Making research searchable
• Enabling teams to revisit past findings
• Supporting continuous discovery
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Optimal Interviews brings this to life by automatically capturing recordings, generating transcripts, structuring insights from the start, and making everything searchable so teams can easily revisit, build on, and continuously learn from their research.
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So what did we learn? Here are some key takeaways from this webinar, plus answers to the most common questions we heard.
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1. The biggest bottleneck isn’t conducting interviews. It’s everything surrounding it.

Running interviews isn’t just about talking to users. It’s everything before and after:

• Recruiting participants
• Coordinating calendars
• Managing reschedules and no-shows
• Setting up emails and reminders
• Transcribing, organizing, and synthesizing findings
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That overhead adds up quickly. There’s opportunity in automating these workflows and removing the friction around them. Optimal Interviews solves this by:
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• Creating a central calendar
• Emailing participants with confirmations and session reminders
• Automatically capturing recordings
• Generating transcripts
• Uploading and generating summaries and insights
• Structuring insights from the start
• Allowing you to explore instantly with AI Chat
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2. Speed matters more than ever (and it’s finally achievable)

Research isn’t slowing down. Product cycles are getting faster, and teams expect insights just as quickly.

What stood out most:

• Interviews can now go from recording → transcript → insights in minutes
• Teams can share highlight reels, clips and findings almost immediately
• Analysis can start while context is still fresh
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One team told us that a few years ago it took them three weeks to analyze user interviews for an initiative. When they replicated the same study in Optimal Interviews, they were able to generate usable insights in about five minutes.
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That shift from lagging insight to near real-time understanding is where the real impact lies.

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3. Scheduling should feel effortless

Interview scheduling sounds simple, but it’s often where things break down.
You can use Optimal Interviews to ensure:
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• Availability blocks with buffers
• Controlled rescheduling and cancellations
• Video conferencing integrations
• Support for collaborators
• Built-in, secure participant communication & messaging (coming soon)
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When done right, scheduling fades into the background so teams can focus on conversations, not coordination.
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4. AI is reshaping analysis but humans stay in control

AI is already proving its value in the analysis phase:

• Automatic transcription across multiple languages
• Theme and insight extraction across interviews
• Highlight reels and supporting evidence
• Natural language queries over your research
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But one point came through clearly: AI accelerates analysis but it doesn’t replace human judgment and sensitivity.
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Researchers still play a critical role in validating insights, interpreting nuance, and deciding what matters for the business. Think of AI as getting you to 80% faster, while you own the final 20%.

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5. The real unlock is continuous, reusable research

Here’s what you can achieve with Optimal Interviews:

• You can ask questions of past interviews using natural language
• Create new custom themes or topics on demand for AI to add new insights into
• Re-analyze old research with fresh context
• Add new interviews to your existing Optimal Interviews study and refresh the insights
• Identify gaps and spin up new studies faster
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This turns research from static storage into something dynamic, something you can continuously mine and build on.
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FAQs from the Webinar

Does the platform synthesize insights or just aggregate data?

Both. You can extract insights from individual interviews, but the real value often comes from patterns across multiple sessions. Aggregation helps surface stronger, more reliable themes, while still preserving standout moments from single participants.
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How is sensitive data handled?

Privacy is a core focus and consideration with Optimal Interviews. Some of the key protections include automatic redaction of personally identifiable information (PII) and enterprise-grade AI infrastructure with strict data isolation. We're also looking to expand Optimal Interviews anonymized scheduling and communication and manual redaction controls before analysis.
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What if I can’t connect my video conferencing tools?

Integrations are available for Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. 

You can still run everything without integrations:

• Set availability without integrations
• Add conferencing links yourself
• Manage sessions independently
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Integrations are helpful but not required.
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Can I search across multiple studies?

Today, teams often bring relevant interviews into one project for analysis. Looking ahead, the goal is broader. Optimal’s looking into how the platform can search and query across all research, use AI chat to explore insights across studies, and surface insights at a Workspace level.
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Can I query transcripts or AI summaries?

Yes. You can search transcripts directly and use AI-powered chat to explore themes, generate summaries, or even turn findings into shareable outputs like Slack posts or reports.

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Final thought

Interviews aren’t new. But the way we run them and what we can get out of them is changing fast.

By removing operational overhead and reducing time to insight, teams can talk to users more often, share insights faster, and build a research repository that becomes part of everyday product decision-making.
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If you want to experience the full walkthrough, demo, and Q&A from the session, we encourage you to watch the full webinar.
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👉 You can watch the full training webinar here.

Since launching Optimal Interviews in December, we've been tracking closely as research, product, and design teams put it to the test. The tool is driving a real transformation in workflows, and we’re energized by the feedback so far.

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• “What took me manually 3 weeks to analyze 4 years ago, with the AI functionality, now took me less than 5 minutes. It’s crazy!”
• “This changes everything for how we work with interview data.”
• “The insights were spot on, and I was impressed by how well the tool understood the themes in the interview.”
• "I tried it for the first time this week. I was impressed by the amount of insights." 

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Optimal Interviews was built to remove the friction from one of research's most time-intensive steps: analyzing interview recordings. With automated transcription, AI-generated insights, highlight reels, summaries, and citations, the tool transforms hours of manual review into something that happens in minutes.

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But we’re not done yet. We’re constantly building and evolving based on your feedback. With the latest releases like automatic recording, every session can now be captured and stored automatically, helping teams build a centralized user research repository and supporting continuous research.

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Here’s a look at how teams are using Optimal Interviews, the latest work in this space, and where we’re headed.
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How Teams Are Using Optimal Interviews

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Researchers across industries are leveraging Optimal Interviews in a variety of ways. Here are just a few examples from current users:

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• Understanding customer interactions with voice assistants and AI to inform user experience and product development.
  
  
• Studying habits, purchasing patterns, and customer frustrations to optimize experiences and conversions.
  
  
• Evaluating how users navigate and interact with customer-facing websites to improve user experience.
  
  
• Gathering feedback from employees about internal tools and systems to improve workplace efficiency and satisfaction.

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Recent Enhancements: New Features for More Automation

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It’s been a busy few months, and we’ve shipped several meaningful updates over the past few months. Here’s what’s new:
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1. Multilanguage Support for Global Research

Optimal Interviews now supports 13 languages, automatically detecting and transcribing interviews in their original languages. AI Chat is also ready to assist your team in these languages, ensuring a seamless experience no matter what language your team is using.
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2. Video Conferencing Integrations

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‍Sync Optimal Interviews with your Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams account to automatically generate and attach meeting links to sessions scheduled with the Optimal scheduler.
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3. Automatic Recording

You can choose to automatically record and upload sessions scheduled through Optimal, eliminating the need for manual uploads. Sessions can now be captured and stored automatically, enabling teams to conduct continuous research. Accumulate insights over time in a central repository, where they remain always accessible and ready to be explored further with AI Chat.
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4. Custom Topics

Custom topics allow you to define specific areas of interest for AI to focus on for interview insights. As more recordings are added, the tool will automatically generate insights based on these topics, so you can easily filter and focus on the data that matters most to you.

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What’s Next for Optimal Interviews

Our ultimate goal? To keep finding ways to reduce manual effort. Let Optimal streamline your research workflow, automate time-consuming tasks, and help you build out your qualitative research repository.

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We have a number of significant additions in development, including:
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Calendar Integrations

Sync you and your team’s calendars (Google and Microsoft) with Optimal Interviews so you can easily schedule and sync you and your team’s interview availability. Avoid double booking and get scheduled sessions automatically added to your calendar.

Enhanced Privacy & Messaging System

Interviewers and participants will be able to message each other directly through Optimal. This helps protect personal contact details e.g. email addresses and reduces unintended bias, such as revealing the study creator’s organization. Teams can coordinate, add clarifications, and follow up more efficiently without exposing personal information.
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We'd Love to Hear From You

How are you using Optimal Interviews in your research? What's working well, and what would you like to see us build next?
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And if you're just getting started, our Interviews 101 guide is a great place to begin.

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Want to learn more about how to harness the full potential of Optimal Interviews and AI Chat? Register for this live training.
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Optimal Interviews is updated continuously and shaped with feedback from users. Follow our release notes or share your thoughts via live chat or feature request form to give your feedback and stay in the loop.

Collaboration tools like Mural, FigJam, and Miro are staples of how modern teams can brainstorm, map ideas, align on plans, and build together. But a canvas alone can't tell you if you're on the right track or guide you to what comes next when progress stalls. That's where Optimal AI Chat and user insights come in.

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By starting or bringing real user insights into the boards your team already works in, you can reduce ambiguity, ground discussions in real research, and accelerate decision-making. 

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Here are 7 ways to use AI Chat alongside your collaboration boards.

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1. Align on key objectives

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Before your next planning session, use Optimal AI Chat to surface relevant insights from your interview recordings. Add a summary directly into your Mural, Miro, or FigJam board so everyone comes in with the same context and understanding of the objectives. Instead of starting with assumptions, your team can start with real user insights and clear trade-offs to discuss.
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Try this prompt: "Summarize the key considerations for [decision topic] and flag any trade-offs we should discuss as a team."
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2. Create a user journey map

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AI Chat can analyze interview transcripts and video recordings and highlight common jobs to be done, behaviors, and friction points. You can then map those steps visually on your board and identify where the experience breaks down.
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Try these prompts: “Summarize the typical jobs to be done for the people we interviewed.”
“For this job you identified [paste job details], detail the journey steps.” 

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3. Turn pain points into design and product decisions

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AI Chat can analyze recurring themes from your interview recordings and convert them into concrete opportunities your team can explore next. Adding these to your board gives the team a clear starting point rather than a vague list of problems.
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Try this prompt:  "Based on these pain points [paste notes or themes], suggest three product improvements we could explore."

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4. Sharpen your marketing messaging

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Interview insights aren’t just valuable for product, research, and design teams. Marketing teams can also use AI Chat to quickly evaluate messaging, positioning, and customer perception.

When running preference or concept testing interviews, AI Chat can quickly analyze the feedback and suggest positioning directions you can workshop on your board.
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Try this prompt: “Suggest positioning options based on the interview feedback.”

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5. Facilitate workshops

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Running workshops and brainstorming sessions with cross-functional teams can be challenging. Conversations drift, discussions stall, and teams sometimes struggle to focus on the most important issues. 
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AI Chat can help you structure the conversation before the workshop even begins by generating discussion guides based on user insights from your interviews. Add the chat outputs directly to your board to guide the session.
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Try this prompt: “Generate a structured discussion guide based on the pain points of the interviewees.”


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6. Make brainstorming more focused

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Open brainstorming can be valuable. It can also be chaotic without clear direction. By leveraging AI Chat, you can guide your brainstorming sessions with intelligent suggestions, topic generation, and idea organization.
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Try this prompt: “Generate 10 brainstorm ideas based on these user insights and group them into themes we could explore.”

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7. Map complex processes

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Visualizing complex processes and systems is easier with tools like Miro, FigJam, and Mural. AI Chat can help you map out each step. AI Chat can help break down a process step-by-step, highlighting decisions, dependencies, and potential friction points based on your interviews. Your team can then map these steps visually and identify opportunities for improvement.
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Try this prompt: “Create a step-by-step process map for how users complete [task], including key decisions and potential friction points.”

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Using Optimal AI Chat for seamless collaboration

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The best collaboration happens when teams have the right information at the right time. 

Optimal AI Chat gives your team a jumpstart for your interview analysis: clearer inputs, faster synthesis, and smarter outputs that translate directly into what you're building on your boards.

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Whether you're running a workshop, mapping a user journey, or planning a product launch, AI Chat helps you spend less time getting oriented and more time making decisions.
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Ready to see what your team can do with it?
Learn more about best practices for AI Chat or book a demo.