Release Notes - 7th May, 2026

This release includes major enhancements across Audience Cloud, AI Moderator, AI Analytics, UX Research workflows, platform usability, and infrastructure improvements.

Highlights 

• Expanded Audience Cloud capabilities and publishing workflows  
• Improved multilingual AI Moderator interview experience  
• Enhanced AI Analytics and unified Themes workspace   
• New UX research and response collection capabilities  
• Improved onboarding, validation, and configuration workflows  
• Security, infrastructure, and compliance enhancements  
• Platform-wide UI cleanup and usability refinements  

New Features & Enhancements  

1. Audience Cloud Improvements  

Credit Manager & Audience Credit Dashboard  

• Added Audience Credits section within Settings to help teams track and manage available, reserved, and consumed credits.  
• Introduced credit usage analytics and purchase flow for better visibility into audience consumption and operational planning.  
• Improved credit management experience with dedicated credit purchase and monitoring workflows.  

Audience Selection & Recruitment Flow  

1. Introduced a new audience source selection flow during study setup.  

2. Researchers can now choose between:  

• Decode Audience Cloud for panel recruitment  
• Self-Recruit option for sharing studies with their own participants  

3. Improved participant recruitment experience with clearer audience selection and study publishing workflows.  

Audience Criteria & Cost Configuration    

Introduced real-time order summary and credit estimation visibility during audience setup.  

Credit Validation & Checkout Experience  

• Added credit validation during study publishing workflow.  
• Researchers are now notified when sufficient audience credits are unavailable before checkout.  
• Introduced streamlined checkout and credit purchase flow to improve publishing reliability and reduce failed publishing attempts.  

Vendor Control & Integrations  

• Added vendor management controls within Audience Cloud integrations.  
• By default, Cint and Dynata integrations are available and active for audience recruitment.  
• Clients can now activate or deactivate specific audience vendors based on their recruitment preferences or operational requirements.  
• Improved flexibility and control over panel provider management workflows.  

2. AI Moderator Enhancements  

Expanded Indian Language Support  

• Added support for additional Indian languages within the AI Interview language selection flow.  
• Researchers can now conduct multilingual qualitative interviews more effectively across regional audiences.  
• Improved accessibility and participant comfort for non-English interview experiences.  

3. AI Analytics & Research Intelligence  

Unified Themes Workspace  

• Introduced a unified Themes workspace by bringing both Manual Themes and AI-generated Themes into a single analysis view.  
• Researchers can now create, manage, and analyze manual and AI themes together within one centralized workspace.  
• Improved thematic analysis workflow with better organization, easier navigation, and streamlined insight management across qualitative studies.  

4. Benchmark Analytics Enhancements  

• Added benchmark score calculation support across all study categories.  
• Enables more standardized comparative analytics and category-level benchmarking. 
• Improved consistency and reliability of benchmark-driven research insights.  

5. UX Research & Study Experience  

Image Response Block  

• Added support for Image Response blocks within UX research studies.  
• Participants can now upload and respond using images as part of study tasks and feedback collection.  
• Enables richer visual feedback and improves qualitative understanding during UX evaluations.  

Prototype Import Enhancements  

• Improved prototype import workflows and usability for design-based studies.  
• Enhanced handling and compatibility for imported prototype experiences.  
• Simplified setup process for UX and product research teams conducting prototype testing.    

6. Platform Experience & UX Improvements  

Configuration Page Redesign    

• Refined configuration workflows with improved layout, navigation, and usability enhancements.  
• Removed unused and redundant UI elements to simplify the study setup experience. 
• Introduced a cleaner dashboard-first design approach for improved workflow clarity and faster researcher navigation.  

Signup Flow Improvements   

• Added enhanced email validation during signup and onboarding workflows.  
• Improved onboarding reliability and reduced invalid or incomplete account registrations.  
• Enhanced user verification experience during account creation.  

7. Security & Infrastructure  

Enhanced System Stability & Future-Proofing: Optimized PII redaction workflows and upgraded AI infrastructure to support newer models, ensuring more reliable data privacy handling and long-term platform scalability. 

Impact Summary  

This release significantly enhances the Decode platform by improving audience recruitment workflows, multilingual AI interview capabilities, AI-powered analytics, and overall research usability. The updates streamline study setup and publishing experiences, strengthen qualitative insight generation, and provide researchers with more advanced audience segmentation and thematic analysis capabilities.