Product updates and latest releases
Set clear expectations and secure consent with a new Participant Agreement option in Interviews. Add your own terms covering topics like privacy, data use, and what participants can expect from the session.
A clear participant agreement can help improve participant quality by making study requirements clear upfront. This helps screen out people who aren’t comfortable with your requirements and help ensure the right people get into the right study from the start.
When enabled, invited participants must read and agree to the terms before they can book an interview.
You'll find this option under Automated emails under Manage.
You can now use MCP to search and explore the automated transcripts of responses to your AI moderated survey questions.
Connect Optimal with your preferred AI tool and ask questions about your sessions, without manually searching through transcripts.
Use MCP to:
You can also use MCP to instantly search, analyze, and talk to your Optimal data, including participant results, study setup and metadata, interview insights, task results, and study insights & analysis.
Learn more about how you can use MCP to uncover new insights, create deliverables, and automate workflows.
With the new redaction editor in Optimal Interviews, you can now redact content before any AI-powered insights are created, giving you greater confidence and control over what information is included in your analysis.
To get started, go to Details > Privacy and enable Suspend auto-generation of insights. This allows you to redact recordings (audio & transcript and/or video image) before any insights are generated.
The redaction editor is designed specifically for removing content from recordings and analysis outputs. It does not currently support additional editing or correcting of transcript text.
This release builds on our existing automatic PII redaction capabilities. For English and Spanish (US & Latin America) interview recordings, Optimal can automatically detect and redact certain types of sensitive information e.g. phone numbers, bank details across audio, transcripts, AI-generated insights, AI Chat, and key quotes. Learn more.
Together, manual and automatic redaction capabilities help research teams better protect participant privacy, support compliance requirements, and use AI-powered analysis with greater confidence and control.
We’ve updated Interviews calendar availability to give you more control over how your Google or Microsoft calendar availability is reflected in the Interviews scheduler.
These updates only apply to connected calendars with Full Sync permissions.
A new Unaccepted events prevent bookings setting lets you control whether certain calendar invitations block your availability. This setting is turned on by default.
Here’s how it will work:
You can find this setting under advanced settings via the gear icon under Collaborators.
Build profiles and define exactly who you need from demographics, location, job title, seniority, company size, industry, B2B, and more.
Explore the expanded targeting options for self-service recruitment and new recruitment capabilities with Profiles:
Profiles is now available in Usability Testing and will be rolling out to other study types later this year. Start by selecting Optimal Panels under the Recruit tab.
You can now use MCP to search and explore your automated transcripts from your Optimal Interviews and Usability Testing studies.
Connect Optimal with your preferred AI tool and ask questions about your sessions, without manually searching through transcripts.
Use MCP to:
You can also use MCP to instantly search, analyze, and talk to your Optimal data, including participant results, study setup and metadata, interview insights, task results, and study insights & analysis.
Learn more about how you can use MCP to uncover new insights, create deliverables, and automate workflows.
It's now easier to review and communicate compelling insights to drive informed decisions with automated highlight reels in Usability Testing.
Review highlight reels that bring together key moments from multiple participants to support findings and citations.
To access a highlight reel, select an insight and click on Show citations. Then click on the three dots (⋮) by a highlight reel to Download video.
We've also recently added options to add branding and end tasks automatically for prototype tasks to Usability Testing. Learn more about these updates.
Optimal’s new AI assistant helps you choose the right research method for your goals.
Tell us what you’re looking to learn, what you have so far (such as an idea or prototype), and how many people you want to hear from. We’ll recommend a study type that best fits your needs, along with the reasoning behind the recommendation.
Designed to make research more approachable, it enables anyone on your team to get started with confidence. Whether you’re new to research or an experienced researcher looking for the right method, it makes it easier to choose the right approach, conduct meaningful research, and get to insights faster.
Get started on your Home page.
When we heard that End study and Set auto-end conditions could be hard to locate in Usability Testing, we acted quickly to make these options more visible and easier to access so you can manage your studies with greater ease.
You can now find the End study and Set auto-end conditions on the Results tab along with the Review and publish section under Build.
We are always open to hearing how we can improve Optimal, whether it’s a big idea or an incremental change that makes your experience better.
Please reach out anytime via the feedback and feature request form.
We've expanded the ways you can customize your studies in Usability Testing, giving you more control over the participant experience. Learn more about the latest enhancements.
Up next for Usability Testing: