--- title: "Release Notes - 7th May, 2026" url: "https://help.getdecode.io/en/article/release-notes-7th-may-2026" language: "en" last_updated: "2026-09-09T07:23:23.058Z" --- # 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.   ![image](https://cdn-assets.productfruits.com/19571814-eb64-4dec-8f20-62c7ea924313) **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.   ![image](https://cdn-assets.productfruits.com/0b639530-467c-4c31-b2a8-ff2d602c3d36) **Audience Criteria & Cost Configuration**     Introduced real-time order summary and credit estimation visibility during audience setup.    ![image](https://cdn-assets.productfruits.com/4f9a52e9-f33c-4154-8e38-b52c19cd6e14) **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.   ![image](https://cdn-assets.productfruits.com/840e5852-42d6-46f9-97a3-7a80b771bcdf) **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.   ![image](https://cdn-assets.productfruits.com/2792e13e-7436-4853-879b-8f15dc964867) ### **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.   ![image](https://cdn-assets.productfruits.com/488e101e-6030-4a05-b8dd-3ee8306c6210) ### **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.