Outset | The AI-Moderated Research Platform

Outset

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Website
Last Updated:
2025/09/17
Description:
Outset is an AI-moderated research platform designed for in-depth qualitative interviews at scale. It enables faster, more efficient customer research with AI-driven user interviews, synthesis, and highlight reels.
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AI research
user research
AI interviews
market insights
usability testing

Overview of Outset

Outset: The AI-Moderated Research Platform for Deep Customer Insights

What is Outset? Outset is an AI-moderated research platform designed to help businesses conduct in-depth qualitative interviews at the speed and scale of a survey. It empowers researchers to gather rich, nuanced insights from hundreds of participants simultaneously, across any language, turning raw conversations into actionable themes and quotes in hours instead of weeks.

How does Outset work?

Outset leverages AI to conduct user interviews, synthesize findings, and generate highlight reels automatically. The platform allows you to:

  • Conduct hundreds of user interviews at once, in any language.
  • Use an AI interviewer that engages participants in rich dialogue and probes deeper to get the "why" behind answers.
  • Instantly generate summaries, themes, powerful quotes, and customizable highlight reels from every interview.
  • Customize your own AI interviewer persona and discussion guide.

Key Features and Benefits

  • AI-Moderated User Interviews: Conduct hundreds of interviews simultaneously, in any language, with an AI interviewer that digs deep to uncover the "why" behind answers.
  • AI Synthesis & Highlight Reels: Automatically generate summaries, themes, and impactful quotes from every interview, saving hours of manual analysis.
  • Customizable AI Interviewer: Tailor the AI interviewer's persona, discussion guide, moderator instructions, and language to suit your specific research needs.
  • Multimodal Research: Conduct interviews via video, voice, or text, allowing participants to engage in their preferred mode of communication.
  • Flexible Participant Recruitment: Recruit participants from your own customers, internal panels, or trusted partners like User Interviews and Prolific.
  • Versatile Testing Capabilities: Test marketing assets, Figma prototypes, live websites, product designs, videos, and more.

Who is Outset for?

Outset is built for teams who need real insights, fast. It's designed for:

  • Market Researchers: Explore customer needs, test creative concepts and messaging, and generate highlight reels to share with stakeholders.
  • UX Researchers: Conduct discovery interviews, concept and usability tests with AI, and track user behavior over time with instant synthesis.
  • Product Teams: Validate existing ideas or uncover new opportunities at a speed and scale never before possible.

Use Cases

Outset supports deep customer insights across every stage of product development:

Discovery Use Cases:

  • Market Strategy: Understand market trends and customer segments.
  • Segmentation & Personas: Develop detailed customer profiles.
  • Brand Research: Assess brand perception and awareness.
  • Innovation & Concept Testing: Validate new product ideas and concepts.

Evaluative Use Cases:

  • User Experience & Usability: Identify usability issues and improve user flows.
  • Creative Testing: Evaluate the effectiveness of marketing materials.

Why Choose Outset?

  • Go Deeper, at Scale: Capture rich, nuanced insights from hundreds of participants at once.
  • Go Faster: Turn raw conversations into themes, quotes, and insights in hours instead of weeks.
  • Spend Less: Reduce research costs by enabling one person to do the work of an entire research team.

What Problems Does Outset Solve?

Outset addresses several key challenges in traditional user research:

  • Time-Consuming Manual Analysis: AI synthesis drastically reduces the time spent manually reviewing and analyzing interview data.
  • Limited Scale: AI-moderated interviews allow you to reach a larger and more diverse pool of participants.
  • Bias in Moderation: AI provides a consistent and unbiased approach to moderating interviews.

Real User Testimonials

Many leading companies trust Outset to accelerate their research and make better decisions. Here are some testimonials:

  • Michael Widenmeyer, Consumer Insights Senior Manager: "Outset is now a key tool for our team to get more, better, and most importantly, faster research done, accelerating our innovation pipeline substantially."
  • Wil Readinger, Head of UX Research: "The speed and quality of the responses were outstanding. Outset will afford my team the opportunity to significantly increase the speed of delivery."
  • Jeff Zimmerman, Chief Product Officer: "Outset's AI engaged users and asked follow-up questions that elicited specific, long-form answers that helped us understand what was important to them. And it did so at 10x-20x scale of customer interviews."

How to Use Outset

  1. Upload a Guide: Enter or upload your discussion guide to Outset and customize your AI user interviewer.
  2. Recruit Participants: Recruit with Outset's panel, integrate with your own panel partners, or share with your own users.
  3. Discover Insights with AI: Watch the AI user interviewer dig deep with participants and pull out what matters most.

Conclusion

Outset is transforming the way user research is conducted. By leveraging AI, Outset enables businesses to gather deeper insights, faster, and more efficiently than ever before. If you're looking to accelerate your innovation pipeline and make better, more informed decisions, Outset is the research platform for you.

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