2025 Lyssna year in review

This year brought some big changes to how research happens in Lyssna. From live website testing to AI-powered summaries, we focused on helping you get to insights faster without sacrificing quality.

Whether you’re testing websites, conducting interviews, or managing research across teams, here’s what shipped in 2025 to support your work.

How we approached 2025

Our product strategy this year centered on a simple principle: make research faster and more accessible without sacrificing quality. That meant tackling the time-consuming parts of research (like transcription and synthesis), expanding our reach (with multi-language support), and building infrastructure for teams managing research at scale (with Spaces and Wallets).

We also leaned into AI – but thoughtfully. Every AI feature we shipped is designed to speed up analysis and reduce manual work, not to replace your judgment. You'll see that philosophy reflected throughout the features below.

Major launches

These are the big ones – the features that expand what’s possible with Lyssna or fundamentally change how you work.

Live website testing

Watch real people use your website – or your competitors'.

The setup is straightforward: add your URL, set your tasks, recruit your participants. No code snippets or downloads needed. A floating modal keeps instructions visible as users navigate, so they never lose context.

This solves a common challenge: understanding how users actually interact with a live site in real-world conditions. You get a direct view of where users get stuck, what makes them click, and why they bounce – without the constraints of static prototypes.

Multi-language support for interviews

Recruit and conduct user interviews in 30 languages, end-to-end. 

Emails, calendar invites, and the participant interface translate fully, making it easier to connect with diverse audiences, whether you're expanding into new markets or building more inclusive research. This removes the language barrier that often limits who you can talk to and where you can conduct research.

Works with both Lyssna panel recruitment and your own participants.

Spaces and Wallets

For teams managing research at scale, Spaces let you organize studies by team, product, or client. Set visibility rules, manage access, and move studies between Spaces as needed.

Wallets let you assign and track research credits by Space, with full spend tracking and transaction history. This gives research teams the governance and visibility they need when managing multiple projects or distributed teams.

Useful if you’re scaling research ops or need tighter control over who sees what and who spends where.

AI-powered features

We introduced several AI capabilities this year, all designed to speed up analysis without replacing the work that requires your judgment and expertise.

Our philosophy on AI is straightforward: use it to handle repetitive, time-consuming work so you can focus on interpretation and strategy. That means helping with transcription, summarization, and follow-up questions – but always keeping you in control of the narrative and insights.

AI-powered summaries (Synthesize)

Generate AI summaries for any question type, then edit, expand, or rewrite. You can also write summaries from scratch if you prefer. Apply them to individual questions, entire sections, or full studies. Works retrospectively on past studies too.

The goal is making insights easier to share while keeping quality and nuance intact.

AI follow-up questions 

When participants give brief responses, AI can prompt for more detail with smart follow-up questions. You control how many to ask. View the conversation step-by-step or as a single summary. 

This helps you get deeper qualitative data without manually reviewing every response to decide where you need more detail.

AI interview summaries 

Transcribe an interview and get an AI summary alongside the full transcript. Both appear in separate tabs on your Recordings page. Useful for quickly scanning what was covered before diving into the full conversation.

Improve writing with AI 

Polish your study questions, flagging bias, clarity, and phrasing issues. See suggestions, the reasoning behind them, and apply the change in one simple flow.

Recruit with AI

Tell us in a few words who you’re looking to recruit from our panel, and our AI will help you target the right participants. It suggests demographic filters based on your prompt, so you can spend less time setting up and more time learning. 

Research capabilities

We added and expanded several existing features this year to give you more flexibility in how you conduct research.

• Matrix survey questions: Let participants evaluate multiple items using the same rating scale. Useful for comparisons and sentiment analysis – like rating multiple features on the same criteria, or evaluating different design options across consistent dimensions.

• Screener logic: Add branching to your screeners to route participants appropriately, skip irrelevant questions, and automatically disqualify people who don't fit your criteria. Works for both tests and interviews.

• Audio recording questions: A new question type where participants respond with their voice. Listen to responses or read auto-generated transcripts. Particularly useful when you want to capture tone, emotion, or longer-form responses.

• Video screeners for interviews: Include video questions in your interview screener. Watch applicants' video responses on the Applicants page before booking. Helps you assess communication style and fit before committing calendar time.

• Password-protected Figma prototypes: Test with password-protected Figma files by adding the password in the builder. Removes a common blocker when you need to test work that’s still under wraps.

• Section groups and randomization: Group test sections together and show them in random order to reduce order bias. You can show all sections or just a subset.

• Transcription for test recordings: Transcribe individual recordings or all at once. Supports multiple languages. 

• Recordings for more test types: Record preference tests, five second tests, design surveys, and free-flow prototypes, giving you richer qualitative data. 

Platform and workflow

We also shipped some improvements to how you work in Lyssna, and how participants experience your studies.

• Exportable visualizations: Download results as PNG or SVG. Customize width, background, and data display. Copy to clipboard or save. Works for text responses, multiple choice, preference tests, card sorts, and tree tests.

• Agreements: Attach PDFs (like NDAs) to tests and interviews. Only qualified participants see them. Everyone gets a copy for their records.

• Bulk flag interview applicants: Mark multiple unsuitable applicants at once. If you’re using our research panel, we’ll automatically source replacements for you.

• Usage reports: Dashboard showing study activity, credit spend, and team usage. Filter and export as needed.

• Auto top-up credits: Set a minimum credit balance and we’ll automatically top up when you dip below it. One less thing to monitor when you’re running continuous research.

• No minimum panel orders: Place orders starting from just one response – useful for pilot testing.

• Saved demographic selections: Your selections are saved on the order form if you navigate away mid-setup.

• Chat with interview panelists: Message booked panelists directly from the Sessions page. They can message you too. Useful for last-minute rescheduling or clarifying setup details.

• Better chat alerts: Chime notifications and tab title updates when panelists message you mean you don’t miss messages when you’re working in another tab.

• More languages: We added Filipino and Finnish to our test-taking interface. When your study is in these languages, participants see everything in their native language.

• Upgraded billing: Stronger payment security, global tax compliance, clearer billing history, company details on invoices, multiple credit card support, and invoices for credit purchases.

• Better heatmaps: New heatmap system with improved visuals, performance, and accuracy across all image sizes.

• Smarter navigation: We redesigned our sidebar to help you find what you need more easily.

• Refreshed UI: Updated headers, results page, study navigation, and team settings for better consistency and usability.

Lyssna Labs

This year we introduced Labs – our space for testing new ideas before they become permanent features. It lets us experiment with emerging capabilities (like some of the AI features we mentioned above) and get your feedback early, so we can refine features based on how you actually use them.

You’ll see Labs features marked throughout the platform. They’re available to all users by default, but you can disable them in your settings if you prefer to stick with established features.

We love data (here’s some of ours)

Behind all these features, here’s a snapshot what our 2025 looked like in numbers:

• 2.15 million test responses collected across the platform.

• 690,000+ Lypanel participants from 124 countries available for recruitment.

• 2,424 Linear issues closed, from bug fixes to feature launches (our small team has been busy!).

• A bunch of amazing new customers, including AIA Insurance, Volvo, G-Star, Uniqlo, Allianz, Red Bull, ManyChat, and Hexagon.

What’s next

Thanks for being part of Lyssna’s 2025. We’re excited about what’s ahead and looking forward to shipping more features that make your research work better.

As always, if you have thoughts on what would be most useful, please get in touch.

Ready to make 2026 your year of better research? 

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