The new Interviews Scheduler lets you to set up your availability and invite participants to book in sessions directly to save you time and streamline your workflow.

With the scheduler, you can:

• Invite participants via a link or invite via email.
• View upcoming and completed sessions in one place.
• Let participants reschedule. No back-and-forth emails.
• Add collaborators and automatically notify everyone of changes.
• Set session limits & calendar buffers.
• Automate email invites, reminders, confirmations, and thank you messages.

⭐ We’ve also updated the Interviews workflow and refreshed the design and navigation as part of this release.

When you create a new Interviews study, you'll be directed to the Setup tab. There, you can proceed to upload videos via the Privacy tab or click on the Recordings section under Results to get started.

You can now find Insights, Chat, and Recordings under the Results section.

💬 Interviews not available on your current Optimal plan? Please get in touch with your customer success manager or support to learn more.

You can now capture screen recordings for prototype tests accessed on mobile devices and tablets!

How it works:

1. Participants accessing a study on a mobile device or tablet are automatically detected
2. They’re guided to download the Optimal Participant App on the Google Play or Apple Store.
3. No logins required. It's quick and easy for testers to access your study.
4. No additional setup is needed for study creators.

What’s next: Mobile support for password-protected Figma prototypes and Live Site Testing (screen/audio/video recording) are coming soon 🚀

2025 was a year of growth, impact, and innovation!

We’ve supported teams in 45+ countries and nearly 400 cities. Over 1.2M participants completed studies on Optimal this year, helping shape better products and experiences.

We connected our community through 40+ industry events, webinars, and leadership breakfasts, sharing ideas, exploring UX, and pushing the future of research.

With a refreshed platform, the launch of new tools, and AI-powered capabilities, research at Optimal is now faster, easier, and more powerful than ever.

Thank you to everyone who made this year possible.

Onwards and upwards – and happy holidays!

Today, we’re excited to announce general release for Interviews, a brand-new tool designed to save you hours in video analysis.

Interviews is now available for all study-based plans, including Enterprise, Starter and Growth.

Automate your research, accelerate your insights with:

• Instant clarity: Upload your interviews and let AI automatically surface key themes, pain points, opportunities, and other key insights.

• Deeper exploration: Ask follow-up questions and anything with AI chat. Every insight comes with supporting video evidence, so you can back up recommendations with real user feedback.

• Automatic highlight reels: Generate clips and compilations that spotlight the takeaways that matter.

• Real user voices: Turn insight into impact with user feedback clips and videos. Share insights and download clips to drive product and stakeholder decisions.

During early access, we continued to refine key features and added additional capabilities to make Interviews even more powerful:

• Highlight key moments in transcripts and instantly download clips.
• Sharper citation clips to get straight to the “aha!” moments faster.
• Explore themes, patterns, and insights more naturally with our improved conversational model.
• Protect privacy with PII redaction for English audio, transcripts, and insights and the option to disable video playback.
• Upload up to 20 videos per study.
• Bookmark AI chat insights and organize them into themes.
• Select the video sources you want AI Chat to analyze for sharper, more relevant insights.

Interviews not available on your current Optimal plan? Please get in touch with your customer success manager or support to learn more.

Enterprise admins (study limit plans) can now maintain control and visibility across their organization with enhanced admin capabilities, enabling predictable planning, stronger governance, and confident usage across large teams.

Admins can now:

• Set a default study limit for all Workspaces
• Allocate study limits by Workspace, with visibility into usage, remaining studies, and overages
• Track usage with a dedicated reporting dashboard
• Control who can create shared Workspaces and invite users
• Set a default Workspace for all new users
• See study limit expiry reminders

Where admins can find these new features:

• Workspace Settings > Plans
• Workspace Settings > Users and Licenses
• Workspace Settings > Workspace Summary

We’re excited to announce live site testing has officially joined Optimal’s platform! Here’s what makes it powerful:

• Test any live site.
  ​Understand exactly how users interact with any website or web app in a production or staging environment or even a competitor’s site.

• No code. No friction.
  ​Setup takes minutes. No plugins or technical hurdles for you or your testers. Just paste a URL to set up your test and start testing.

• Validate at every stage
  ​Catch issues before they cost you conversions. Identify blockers pre-launch on staging sites or improve existing user flows on live sites.

• Video recordings with real insights
  ​Watch exactly where users hesitate, struggle, or abandon their journey. Back every decision with user feedback and evidence and confidently prioritize your next decisions.

Why This Matters

With live site testing, you get real insights from real user interactions beyond quantitative data.

The result?

• Better competitive insights and analysis
• Fewer surprises post-launch
• Improved usability
• Higher conversion or adoption rates
• Increased user or customer satisfaction
• Faster, data-backed decisions

Live site testing is now available for all plans, except for our legacy Individual plan.

At Optimal, our mission has always been simple: help teams understand their users faster, easier, and with more confidence.

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of early access for Interviews, a brand-new tool designed to save you hours in video analysis. Register for early access.

Automate your research, accelerate your insights with:

• Instant clarity: Upload your interviews and let AI automatically surface key themes, pain points, opportunities, and other key insights.

• Deeper exploration: Ask follow-up questions and anything with AI chat. Every insight comes with supporting video evidence, so you can back up recommendations with real user feedback.

• Automatic highlight reels: Generate clips and compilations that spotlight the takeaways that matter.

• Real user voices: Turn insight into impact with user feedback clips and videos. Share insights and download clips to drive product and stakeholder decisions.

Interviews not available on your current Optimal plan? Please get in touch with your customer success manager or support to learn more.

You can also join our upcoming training webinar on Oct 21st at 12 PM PST. Join us live or register to receive a copy of the recording.

We've added a new Recruitment tab to your left side panel, making it easier to manage your recruitment needs.

Here's what's included:

• Purchase credits and view your credit balance
• Explore flexible recruitment options and understand how it works in Optimal
• Read our FAQs section for quick answers

Have feedback for our team? Please reach out via the feedback form or live chat.

We’ve taken your feedback on board for the new Home and refreshed Studies pages! Here's what's new:

Grid/List toggle: Now you can choose how you browse your studies on the Home page, Studies page, and within your Folders.

Toggle between the card view and list view to review your work in the way that works best for you.

In list view under a Project, you can use the sort options to quickly locate the studies you need.

New sorting options: In addition to date and alphabetical sorting, you can now sort by Study Type and Status.

We’ve expanded the new Studies page to make it easier and faster to find what you need with:

🔎 Smart search: Quickly find studies, folders, and projects by name or study tool.

📌 Quick bookmarks: Pin your most-used projects for easy access.

⬆️ Sort: Sort your studies, projects, and folders alphabetically or by date last modified or created.