Welcome to Aha! Discovery, the research tool for managing interviews. You can capture interviews, review transcripts, uncover key customer insights, and connect what you learn to your product roadmap.
This guide will help you explore Aha! Discovery during your trial and decide whether it fits your research process. The best way to evaluate it is to complete one full workflow with real customer research, from setting up a study to sharing insights with the people who shape product direction.
If you want hands-on guidance along the way, please contact our Customer Success team. We do not have salespeople here — just product experts who respond quickly.
Want to get started quickly? Select Quick start guide at the top of your screen. Then, choose Analyze my calls to upload an existing transcript and start capturing insights right away. Return to this guide when you are ready to explore the full research workflow.
Click any of the following links to skip ahead:
Before you get started
A useful trial begins with a real research question. Before you create anything in Aha! Discovery, get clear on what you want to learn, who you need to hear from, and what materials you already have.
Consider the following before you begin:
Start with one research topic: Choose a single question or decision to explore during the trial. For example, you might want to understand onboarding friction, test assumptions behind a planned feature, or review feedback after a recent launch. A focused use case will show you how Aha! Discovery fits into your existing work.
Decide how you want to evaluate Aha! Discovery: If you are trying it as a standalone product, focus on how it helps you organize interviews, centralize transcripts, and share customer insights. If you also use Aha! Roadmaps, focus on the full workflow from customer research to product decisions so you can see how insights connect directly to ideas, features, and initiatives.
Bring your research materials: Gather one or two interviews, recordings, or transcripts to use during the trial. Solid research materials make the experience more useful than starting with empty records. You will be able to create a study, review conversations, capture highlights, and build an insights report based on actual customer evidence.
Identify who should join the trial: Start with the people who shape product direction or work closely with customer feedback, such as product managers, researchers, and customer-facing teammates. Their involvement will help you judge Aha! Discovery and how well the workflow supports team decisions.
Create a study
A study gives you one place to organize the interviews, research files, and customer insights related to a single research effort.
Navigate to Studies and select Add study. Add a name, choose a study type, and define dates to get started. Then, select Create study.
Choose a study topic: Start with a question tied to a real decision, such as improving onboarding, evaluating a planned feature, or reviewing feedback after a recent launch.
Define what you want to learn: Summarize the purpose of the study, then add the goals of the research and any assumptions you want to test.
Add a script: If you want a more consistent interview process, add or refine a script with the questions you want to ask in each conversation.
Use the study as your research hub: As you add interviews and files, the study becomes the central record for that work.
After this step, you should have one study with a clear purpose and a practical structure for the rest of the trial.
Add participants
The Participants page gives you one place to organize the people you want to include in your research. Add contacts now, import existing contacts, or return to this page when you are ready to plan future conversations.
You can continue the trial with existing transcripts or recordings by moving directly to adding interviews.
When you use Aha! Discovery with Aha! Roadmaps or Aha! Ideas, contacts who submitted or voted on ideas are already available as participants. Review these contacts to find people who have shared feedback related to your research topic.
Add a few people manually: Select Create participant and enter each person's name and email address. Add details such as their organization, title, or group if this information will help you choose the right participants for your study.
Import existing contacts: If your contacts are in a spreadsheet or CRM, import them from a CSV file. Include an email address for every contact. If you include an organization, it must already exist in your Aha! account.
Add participants to your study: Select the contacts or groups that fit your research question, then add them to the study. This lets you prepare the right people for upcoming conversations.
Start with a small, relevant group. You can add more participants as your research needs change.
Add an interview
Once your study is in place, add interviews so you can begin working with real customer conversations. Each interview gives you one place to capture the participant, meeting details, recording, transcript, notes, and insights.
Add a new interview: Open your study and create an interview for upcoming research. Add the participant, date, and meeting details so you can prepare for the conversation in context.
Add a completed conversation: If you already ran an interview, import the transcript or recording so you can review it alongside the rest of the study. If you only have a video file, use AI transcription to render the entire conversation.
Connect your integrations: If your team uses Zoom or Microsoft Teams, set up integrations to support a more complete workflow and bring interviews into Aha! Discovery instantly. With these integrations, you will not have to import transcripts or recordings manually.
Use the interview to organize what you learn: Use your study's script to guide the conversation or organize notes afterward. As interviews add up, the study becomes a record of who you spoke with, what you asked, and what you learned.
Even a small set of interviews is enough to show how the workflow comes together in practice.
Add research files
Customer evidence can come from more than interviews. Add research files to your study to review survey responses, usability test results, and other materials alongside customer conversations. This gives you a fuller view of the research behind a product decision.
Choose a file that supports your research question: Start with material that helps answer the question you defined for the trial. Survey responses are a useful example because they can show patterns across a larger group of customers.
Add the file to your study: Open your study, select Files, then select Add files. Choose the file you want to import and select Import.
Review the file in context: Each file becomes part of the study, so you can review it alongside related interviews and notes. Aha! Discovery supports media files, documents, images, and CSV or XLSX spreadsheets.
Analyze a survey or other research file: If you import survey data, open the file to review the table and ask Elle (the AI assistant) about patterns in the responses.
Adding one file is enough to see how Aha! Discovery brings different sources of customer evidence into the same study. Next, review your interviews and files to capture the highlights that support your research question.
Capture highlights
The transcript is where conversation becomes usable research. Review each interview closely so you can pull out the most useful quotes, learnings, challenges, and patterns. Open an interview where you have added a transcript to see how it works.
Use AI to get started: Ask Elle to summarize the conversation, surface notable moments, and identify highlights worth reviewing. AI can speed up analysis, but your goal stays the same: understand what customers need and use that evidence to make better decisions.
Highlight key moments: Review the transcript. Manually capture the quotes, learnings, clips, and patterns that relate directly to your research goal.
Tag highlights by theme: Add tags so you can track common themes across interviews and spot where customer feedback is consistent or where opinions differ.
Start with one interview so you can see how highlights work. Then, review a few more conversations to identify patterns across the study.
Create an insights report
Turn your highlights into an insights report so the team can review research quickly and use it in product decisions. Start with Elle to create a draft from your linked research highlights, then refine the report around the decision your team needs to make.
Create a draft with Elle: Open an insights report from a study, interview, or research file. Choose a template, then select Draft with Elle. Update the prompt to explain the question you want the report to answer before you generate the draft.
Choose the right scope: Create an insights report for a single interview when one conversation reveals an important finding. Create one for a study when you want to show patterns across several interviews or research files.
Refine the highlights and analysis: Keep the quotes, learnings, and clips that best support the report's message. Use Elle to revise the draft, answer follow-up questions, or incorporate new research.
Make the next decision clear: Connect the findings to the original research question. Explain what the team learned, what needs more validation, and what should happen next.
A short report built around a few strong highlights can make research easier to share and use in product decisions.
Link insights to your roadmap
Link your research to roadmap records so customer evidence can inform product decisions directly. This is one of the clearest ways to evaluate how Aha! Discovery and Aha! Roadmaps work together.
https://aha-videos.wistia.com/medias/7fv6ag9wfu
Link highlights to roadmap records: Connect your research to ideas, features, initiatives, or other roadmap records so the team can review customer evidence in context.
Create new records when needed: If an interview surfaces something the team should act on, create a new record from the highlight so the research can inform future planning.
Use research to support prioritization: Review the linked highlights when product managers assess what to refine, what to prioritize, and what needs stronger validation.
If you are evaluating Aha! Discovery on its own, you can still organize findings through reports, tags, and studies. If you also use Aha! Roadmaps, linking insights gives you a more complete view of how research and planning work together.
Invite your team to collaborate
Invite the right teammates so you can evaluate how Aha! Discovery supports research, review, and decision-making across the team. A small group is enough for a useful trial.
Invite the people who shape decisions: Start with product managers, researchers, and customer-facing teammates who need to understand customer evidence and act on it.
Ask the team to review the same work: Have them review a study, read highlights, and discuss an insights report so everyone can evaluate the same workflow.
Look for practical value: Ask whether the workflow helps the team review research more easily, discuss findings more clearly, and connect evidence to product decisions.
Use the trial to assess collaboration: By this point, you should have a clear view of how Aha! Discovery supports research capture, analysis, and shared understanding across the team.
Start with a small group and one study. That is enough to see whether Aha! Discovery improves how the team works with customer research.
Make a decision
By now, you should have completed a full research workflow in Aha! Discovery. You created a study, added interviews, reviewed transcripts, captured highlights, and shared what you learned. That gives you a practical basis for deciding whether Aha! Discovery fits the way you work.
If it does, keep building on what you started. Add more studies, bring in more interviews, and make research a more visible part of product decision-making. If you also use Aha! Roadmaps, continue linking insights directly to the records that shape your plans.
If it is not the right fit right now, that is useful to know as well. You still leave the trial with a clearer view of your research process and the support you need from your tools.
If you have questions or want help evaluating your setup, please contact our Customer Success team. We are happy to help.