What the 2026 Forrester Experience Platforms Wave Says About the Future of Research

Discuss was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026 and received the highest score in the Current Offering category.

If you are a senior leader in insights, marketing, or product, you have likely noticed a shift in the vocabulary of our industry. The tools we use are no longer just “survey platforms.” The market has converged, and a new category has emerged to describe the infrastructure necessary for modern decision-making: the Experience Research Platform (XRP).

For those evaluating their tech stack for 2026, understanding this category is no longer optional. It is the difference between operating in silos and achieving true human understanding at scale.

This guide explains exactly what this category entails and why it matters.

We believe insight teams don’t need more data. They need less friction. Closing the gap between curiosity and confidence requires systems built for speed and human judgment, not tradeoffs between the two.

We steered the company accordingly to the future that belonged to platforms that could execute both, accelerated by purposeful AI.

We’re deeply honored to be named a Leader. And we believe that vision played a key factor in our recognition.

In The Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026 — The Eight Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up, Discuss was one of only two vendors recognized as a Leader.

We also received the highest possible scores (5.0) in 15 criteria, including Innovation, Roadmap, Live Interviews, and AI-Powered Research Methods. We believe this recognition from Forrester reflects how closely our worldview aligns with where experience research is heading.

But before we dive into our scores, let’s step back and help you understand what an Experience Research Platform actually is and why we believe Forrester’s analysis is critical for your roadmap.

What Is an Experience Research Platform?

For the uninitiated, the acronym XRP might sound like just another buzzword. It isn’t. We think it is an apt response to a fractured landscape where data was trapped in disparate tools.

Forrester defines Experience Research Platforms as: “Platforms used by companies to collect qualitative data to weigh alongside quantitative data in the decision-making process when building products or services”.

Historically, this space was fragmented. You had one vendor for usability testing, another for focus groups, and a third for surveys. But the market has shifted. In her blog announcing The Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026, Forrester analyst Senem Guler Biyikli identified three key trends are defining this category in 2026, which we’ve interpreted as:

1. Diverse Needs: XRPs are no longer just for research professionals. They must support continuous research for designers, product managers, and marketers.
2. High Expectations for AI: Generic summaries are no longer enough. Users now expect “conversational experiences and nuanced analysis” that rival the generative AI tools they use in their personal lives.
3. AI-Moderated Interviews: This is the breakout method of the year. The ability for an AI agent to interview participants at scale in real-time is transforming how global teams gather qualitative data.

Most importantly, given Forrester’s definition of XRPs as weighing qualitative data alongside quantitative data, following completion of their evaluation, it was timely that Discuss announced a merger with quantitative research company Voxco.

Forrester noted in the report that this merger

“is likely to strengthen the platform’s ability to gather quant data as well,” while emphasizing the importance of maintaining seamless interaction between qualitative and quantitative approaches.

What is The Forrester Wave™ Experience Research Platforms 2026?

The Forrester Wave™ is an independent report that provides an evaluation of Experience Research Platforms using Forrester’s defined criteria and scoring framework. These criteria fit under two categories evaluated in the Wave — Current Offering and Strategy — providing organizations a consistent way to understand how different platforms support modern qualitative research.

How Does the Report Work?

For this report, Forrester evaluated vendors across roughly 31 criteria grouped into two categories:

• Current Offering: Does the product actually do what it claims today?
• Strategy: Does the vendor have a vision and roadmap that aligns with where the market is going?

Vendors are then categorized into bands: Leaders, Strong Performers, and Contenders. Being named a Leader means a vendor has been acknowledged with the highest designation in the evaluation among top vendors in the market.

For those who haven’t participated in being evaluated for a Forrester Wave™ before, it is one of the most rigorous and transparent evaluations in the technology sector. This is not a “pay-to-play” evaluation; to us, it is a stress test of a vendor’s reality.

Why Was Discuss Named a Leader?

In Forrester’s evaluation, Discuss received the highest score in the Current Offering category and tied for the second highest score in the Strategy category.

We believe this recognition stems from our refusal to treat AI as a gimmick and abandon our purpose to further human empathy and understanding. We built an AI-centric platform where “agents” don’t just summarize text. They guide and execute the research process to help researchers turn curiosity into clarity.

Here are a few specific criteria in the The Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026 where Discuss received the highest possible score (5.0):

• AI-Powered Research Methods: We didn’t just bolt AI onto a video tool. Forrester’s report noted that “The platform’s strong AI features, such as its AI assistant and AI-moderated interviews, support the end-to-end research process and make global research and analysis efficient and impactful.” The report also stated, “Discuss’ vision is to be an AI-centric platform for qualitative research at scale, with AI agents to guide and execute the entire research process.
• Live Interviews: We remain the gold standard for human-to-human connection. According to Forrester’s evaluation, Discuss “differentiates with its strong live interview features, which offer seamless experiences for participants, moderators, and observers”.
• Roadmap & Innovation: We scored a 5.0 in both criteria, reflecting our “superior commitment to delivering its roadmap and integrating more AI features”.

As the report’s profile on Discuss concludes:

“Discuss is a great fit for companies seeking robust AI capabilities that enable them to scale qualitative research globally”

What Scores did Discuss Receive?

In the The Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026 evaluation, Discuss received the highest score in the Current Offering category and tied for the second highest score in the Strategy category. Discuss also received the highest possible scores (5.0) in 15 individual criteria across Current Offering and Strategy.

1. Participant recruitment
2. Participant quality
3. Live interviews
4. AI-powered research methods
5. Guidance for study creation
6. Data analysis
7. Data visualization
8. Manage access
9. Support for demonstrating ROI of research
10. Multiple languages
11. Platform usability
12. Platform accessibility
13. Innovation
14. Roadmap
15. Pricing flexibility and transparency

What We Believe This Means for Market Researchers

This report comes at a pivotal moment. We spent the last few months on a customer listening tour, sitting down with 40+ senior insights leaders at global enterprises in North America and Europe.

By viewing those conversations in the context of the findings in The Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026 , we believe a clear picture of the industry emerges.

1. The “Qual vs. Quant” Debate is Dead. The Enemy is Latency.

For decades, researchers argued over methodology. Today, that debate is a luxury we can’t afford. The new enemy is latency—the dead time between a business question and a confident answer.

In her blog announcing The Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026, Forrester analyst Senem Guler Biyikli wrote, “XRPs help companies reach customer insights fast by enabling participant recruitment and remote research; they help understand customers in depth, reduce risk in product and service decisions, and scale experience research.”

If your stack requires you to log into three different tools to move from a survey to an interview to an analysis deck, you are paying a “latency tax” on every decision. We believe the market is moving toward integrated execution where qual and quant happen in the same environment.

2. AI Needs to Be Infused Throughout Your Entire Process

Biyikli explicitly notes in her blog that “high-level AI-generated summaries are no longer sufficient”. The market has moved past the novelty phase. Buyers now demand human-AI collaboration.

This reflects what we heard on our tour: Leaders don’t want AI that replaces researchers; they want AI that acts as a force multiplier. They need AI agents that can moderate a study in 50 languages simultaneously or instantly turn a Word doc into a survey, freeing up the human team to focus on strategy.

3. New Tools Will Let You Leverage Data Outside of the Research Lifecycle

One of the biggest inefficiencies in our industry is the “throwaway” nature of research. A study is run, a PDF is written, and the data disappears. But what if you could tap into all that data and query it at any time before, during, and after the research process? Use it to create synthetic audiences to get initial impressions? That’s exactly what we’re working on at Discuss.

Forrester’s definition of an Experience Research Platform emphasizes the importance of platforms that allow you to weigh qualitative data alongside quantitative data continuously. This signals a shift toward reuse. The strongest insights organizations in 2026 will behave like knowledge organizations, building a body of evidence that compounds over time rather than starting from scratch every Monday morning.

How Discuss is Helping Customers Succeed

So, how does Discuss translate these market shifts into reality for our customers?

• We Create a Single Source of Truth: Following our merger with Voxco, we are breaking down the friction in qual/quant handoffs. You can now run a survey, use AI-moderation to detect early signals, trigger live interviews based on the results, and analyze both datasets with one company – Discuss.
• We Solve the “Global Scale” Problem: Latency often stems from logistics. One customer told us they face costs up to $300/hour for human translation. Discuss solves this with AI-driven, real-time translation in over 50 languages, allowing you to run global research without the logistical nightmare.
• We Deliver Both Speed and Rigor: We enable integrated execution. This means using AI to automate the mechanical parts of research (recruiting, scheduling, summarizing) so your team can focus on the rigor of the analysis. We replace the handoffs between vendors with a seamless workflow.

How Discuss is Challenging The Research Status Quo

For us, Discuss being named a Leader in the Forrester Wave is not a finish line; it’s a mandate to keep pushing.

The Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026 states, “Discuss’ vision is to be an AI-centric platform for qualitative research at scale, with AI agents to guide and execute the entire research process.”

We believe that direction matters because AI alone isn’t the point. Speed alone isn’t the point. Trust is.

Yes, AI can move fast. But insight only matters if teams believe it, understand it, and can act on it with confidence.

Looking ahead, we are building capabilities that will allow you to discover themes and categorize customer perspectives across all your systems—ingesting data from Google reviews, social media, and customer communities—to create a layer of intelligence that not only sits above your research stack but also feeds off of the research being done, whether quantitative or qualitative.

The Bottom Line

If you are evaluating Experience Research Platforms in 2026, look beyond the feature list. Ask yourself: Does this platform add friction, or does it remove latency?

The era of disjointed tools and slow handoffs is over. The future belongs to integrated, AI-powered, human-centric research. Discuss is proud to be leading that charge.

Access the Forrester Wave Report

Get your complimentary copy of The Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026 — The Eight Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up report here.

Disclaimer:
The Forrester Wave™: Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026 is © Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here.

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