New Releases

A common piece of feedback we’ve heard recently is the need for improved access to participant data and data export options in Usability Testing. Based on your feedback, we've made this a priority.

You can now review participant attributes and identifiers and export full participant raw data (Excel file) for Usability Testing.

To download, go to Results > Sessions and click the three dots (⋮) by Integrated session to download all participant session data, including participant identifiers, task outcomes, completion times, transcripts, and a range of other session metrics to make analysis and reporting much easier.

These updates give you greater visibility into your participant data and more flexibility in how you analyze, share, and work with your research.

Up next for Usability Testing:

• Highlight reels & video clips: Explore highlight reels, compiling moments that back citations and insights. Highlight parts of transcripts to download relevant clips and compelling moments.

• Task auto-complete: Choose to set prototype tasks to end as soon as participants reach the correct destination and move to the next task or section. When this is enabled, the Finish task button for participants is hidden.

• Add your branding: Customize your study with your logos, brand colors, and other options.

• Chat with your data: Dig deeper into your usability study data. Ask AI chat anything to summarize, rephrase, and generate new evidence. Leverage AI to instantly format insights and deliver clear, stakeholder-ready outputs faster.

We've introduced new enhancements in Usability Testing to help you generate more relevant insights and build your studies with confidence. Check out the latest updates:

• Generate more focused insights with session exclusions: You can now exclude participant sessions under Sessions to include quality responses. Once you've excluded your sessions, you can regenerate new results. You also have the option to re-include those sessions later, if needed.

• Download full session recordings: Dive into an individual participant's feedback and share with your team and stakeholders.

• Preview your study: Preview your participant experience easily at any point before launch. You'll find this preview button at the top left of your study to catch issues early and ensure everything is ready before launch.

Up next for Usability Testing:

• Participant data, identifiers, and data exports: You'll soon have the ability to view participant identifiers and export full participant raw data into CSV and Excel formats.

• Highlight reels & video clips: Explore highlight reels, compiling moments that back citations and insights. Highlight parts of transcripts to download relevant clips and compelling moments.

• Task auto-complete: Choose to set prototype tasks to end as soon as participants reach the correct destination and move to the next task or section. When this is enabled, the Finish task button for participants is hidden.

• Add your branding: Customize your study with your logos, brand colors, and other options.

• Chat with your data: Dig deeper into your usability study data. Ask AI chat anything to summarize, rephrase, and generate new evidence. Leverage AI to instantly format insights and deliver clear, stakeholder-ready outputs faster.

We've made an improvement to the Optimal Recorder in Optimal Interviews to better support teams and enterprise organizations with stricter security meeting settings.

Previously, if your Zoom policies blocked non-authenticated participants from joining meetings, the Optimal Recorder may not have been able to automatically join and record your interview sessions.

The Optimal Recorder is now configured as an authenticated Zoom user, enabling it to join and automatically record meetings even in environments with more stricter and enterprise controls.

No action is needed. This update is now available to all users.

Sync your calendar (Google and Microsoft) with Optimal Interviews so you can easily schedule and connect your and your team's interview availability.

Booked sessions can automatically sync back to your calendar, keeping everything up to date without the extra admin.

Get started under Schedule > Collaborators.

Optimal's new mixed-methods research tool brings prototype testing, live site testing, and surveys into a single, end-to-end study workflow. Research can now mirror how products evolve, from early concept to shipped experience.

Test multiple prototypes side by side, compare different live URLs, or mix prototype and live site tasks together all in one workflow.

With the new Optimal Usability Testing tool, you'll get a study overview with key themes, pain points, and sentiment analysis combining insights across all your study methods along with detailed results per study method with task analysis and recordings, transcripts, key quotes, and automatically generated video clips with citations.

🎙️ Join us for a live training on June 24th 1 PM PDT to see it in action and find out what’s next for usability testing, AI, and qualitative insights at Optimal.

You can now analyze user interviews in over 35 languages in Optimal Interviews to make it easier to gather and review insights across regions and global audiences!

These language(s) will be automatically detected and used to automatically generate transcripts and citation quotes in the original language.

AI Chat is also ready to assist you in any of these languages. Just start a chat, and it will respond in the same language.

Please note that the insights will remain consistent in English. PII redaction is currently supported in English and Spanish (US & Latin America).

How to get started: Head to the Language section under Details and select the language(s) spoken in your interview. You can choose multiple languages spoken in a recording as needed.

Want to see another language supported? We’re continuing to expand language support. Please submit your request via our feature request and feedback form.

Optimal has added a new question type to Surveys! Prompt participants to speak aloud with an AI moderator that can automatically follow up when answers are too brief or off-track, helping you capture deeper, more thoughtful insights. Define how actively the AI moderator should pursue follow-up questions.

You can also provide context on your expected goals and outcome with the Goals section. The AI moderator will use these goals to guide and focus its follow-up questions.

You can use AI moderated questions on its own or along with written questions (note: this AI moderator does not carry context from previous answers).

Coming soon - AI Interviewer: Guided by your study context, discussion guide, and research goals, the AI Interviewer can adapt intelligently in real-time. Review automated key themes, insights, citations, transcripts, and highlight reels. Free up your time so you can focus on insights and accelerate decision-making.

Connect Optimal Interviews with your Zoom account to automatically generate and attach meeting links to sessions scheduled with the Optimal scheduler.

These links are automatically included in booking confirmations and session reminders, saving you time and reducing the risk of errors.

Streamline your scheduling process and ensure participants always have the right link.

Get started under Schedule > Details > Link.

You can now directly integrate with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.

Create custom topics and add context so AI can automatically surface insights aligned to your areas of interest.

As you add more recordings, new, relevant insights will be automatically added to your custom topics. Start by adding a new topic under Insights in Optimal Interviews.

Under Chats, you'll also be able to pin and save new insights to your custom topics.

You can now upload user interviews to Optimal Interviews in the following languages to make it easier to gather and review insights across regions and global audiences!

• Arabic
• Cantonese
• English (US)
• French
• German
• Hindi
• Indonesian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Mandarin Chinese
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Spanish (Spain)
• Spanish (US & Latin America)

These language(s) will be automatically detected and used to automatically generate transcripts and citation quotes in the original language.

AI Chat is also ready to assist you in any of these languages. Just start a chat, and it will respond in the same language.

Please note that the insights will remain consistent in English. PII redaction is currently supported in English and Spanish (US & Latin America).

How to get started: Head to the Language section under Details and select the language(s) spoken in your interview. You can choose multiple languages spoken in a recording as needed.

Want to see another language supported? We’re continuing to expand language support. Please submit your request via our feature request and feedback form.