You’ll now see AI Insights in your Questionnaire and Task Results tabs—instantly surfacing key themes from participant text responses (single- and multi-line). You can also apply a segment to dig deeper and uncover more targeted insights.

Here's what's included:

• Instant insights, right in the study results. No extra tools or workflows needed.
• Grounded in real responses. Each insight features participant quotes and highlights the number of responses relating to the theme, giving you trustworthy evidence.
• Get the full context. Easily drill down to the exact participants behind each insight, so you can verify, understand nuances, and make informed decisions with confidence.
• Segment-specific insights in seconds. Filter by any segment to instantly uncover themes relevant to your target segments.
• Works everywhere. Available for past and current studies, surveys, pre/post-study questions, and post-task questions. If it’s an open text question, it’s covered.

Coming soon! Insights for additional question types

One of your highly requested features is here! Participants can now collapse, expand, and move tasks while completing a prototype test—making it easier to see and interact with more of the prototype design. This is especially useful for showing mobile prototype tests.

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.

This feature is available for Enterprise, Teams, and Individual+ plans. To get started, go to a Prototype test > Setup > Settings to set your preferences for audio, video, and screen recording.

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:

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.

One of your highly requested features is here!

When enabled, tasks will automatically end 0.5 seconds after a participant reaches a correct destination, removing the need for participants to manually confirm that they've completed the task.

This can help improve the overall participant experience, removing extra steps and making tests faster to complete.

To enable this setting, go to a Prototype Test > Setup > Task > Task options > Task end automatically.

Ambiguous or overly complex wording can confuse respondents, making it harder to get reliable, accurate responses. Plus, refining survey and question language is manual and can be a time-consuming process with little guidance.

To solve this, we built an AI-powered tool to help study creators craft questions that resonate with participants and speed up the process of designing studies.

Our new AI Simplify feature helps with:

• Instant Suggestions: Simplify complex question wording and improve clarity to make your questions easier to understand.
• Seamless Editing: Accept, reject, or regenerate suggestions with just a click, giving you complete control.
• Better Insights: By refining your questions, you’ll gather more accurate responses, leading to higher-quality data that drives better decisions.

We’re excited to share that Optimal has now been added to the User Interviews integration marketplace! 🤝

If you’re using User Interviews to recruit for your Optimal studies, you can now easily track participant progress in User Interviews as participants start and finish their studies. Learn how to set up.

Prefer to have Optimal handle your recruitment? We’ve got you covered—from feasibility to reminders and personalized study checks. We work with top panels like User Interviews to ensure faster, seamless completions and meaningful insights for your product development and designs. Learn more.

2025 is shaping up to be an incredible year for UX research—and we’re just getting started!

From richer insights with Video Recording for Prototype Testing to faster study creation with our new Study Flow, Optimal is empowering research, product, and design teams to make confident decisions in days, not weeks.

✨ Ready to see what’s here and what’s coming next? Check out the latest product update.

Inspired by insights from Optimal users, we’ve reimagined study creation to bring you a beautifully streamlined experience with the new Study Flow tab.

With the new Study Flow, you’ll:

⚡ Enjoy faster study set up: Messages & instructions and Questionnaire tabs are combined in a single tab - called Study Flow - for faster editing and settings customization.

✨ See it all at a glance: Easily visualize and understand the participant experience—from the welcome message to the final thank-you screen—every step of the way.

🎯 Duplicate questions: Save time and quickly replicate questions for surveys, screening questions, and pre- and post-study questions.

⭐ Experience enhanced UI: Enjoy a modern, clean design with intuitive updates that minimize scrolling and reduce mental load.

🗂️ Collapse and expand sections: Easily navigate studies by collapsing and expanding sections, making it easier to build out specific parts of your study.

This Study Flow tab is available across all Optimal tools, except for Qualitative Insights.

After months of collaboration with our incredible community, we're thrilled to announce that Prototype Testing has officially graduated from beta and is now available to everyone on the Individual+, Team, and Enterprise plans!

Over the past few months, we've worked alongside a diverse group of customers and UX leaders— who provided invaluable feedback, completed many Usability Tests, and helped us refine this new tool.

Together, we’ve tackled challenges, explored creative solutions, and built something that truly aligns with user needs.

Here’s a look at what we delivered

• Figma OAuth Integration
• Improved security with password management‍
• Improvements to usability
• Results sharing
• Improvement to the workflows of the participant data view
• Ability to take notes in the analysis sections Task Results, Click Maps, Paths, and Questionnaires.
• And of course, we fixed a few 🐛 along the way

Learn more about what's next with Prototype Testing

Recruiting high quality participants can be a hassle and time-consuming. That’s why we’ve relaunched Optimal Recruitment with expanded profiling capabilities, enhanced quality controls, and full-service support—to let you focus on what matters most: powerful insights to drive better decisions.

Let us handle recruitment from start to finish - from feasibility, study reminders, confirmations, and incentive management - so that you can focus on analyzing and gaining insights.

You can access our services anytime via the Recruit tab of your studies. Available now for Card Sorting, Tree Testing, First-Click Testing, Prototype Testing, and Surveys.