Review a single interview

When a participant finishes, their interview appears in Results → Interviews. Click in to see the recording paired with the transcript, plus everything else captured about the call.

Steps

1. Open the interview

   From Results → Interviews, click any session. To move between sessions one by one, use the left and right arrows in the top-left of the session view.

2. Watch the recording

   The video player is at the top. Use the timeline to jump around, or click any line in the transcript to jump to that moment.

   Keyboard shortcuts work whenever a recording is open: the left and right arrow keys skip back or forward 5 seconds, the space bar plays or pauses, and the up and down arrow keys adjust the volume.

   If the study recorded both screen share and webcam, they play side by side (Split screen). A view toggle switches between Split screen, Webcam, and Screen share.

   Recordings play at 1.2x with subtitles on. The player's control bar shows the current speed. Click it to pick 0.5x, 1x, 1.2x, 1.5x, or 2x. Click CC to turn subtitles on or off. CC is underlined while subtitles are on. On a phone, or wherever the player is too narrow for the full bar, both controls sit in the ⋯ menu as Playback speed and a Subtitles switch.

   Strella remembers the speed and subtitles you last picked, so the next interview, clip, or AI chat reel you open in Strella plays the same way. Strella stores the choice in your browser, so another browser or device starts at 1.2x with subtitles on. Shared links, shared reports, and embeds ignore it. They play at the speed and subtitles chosen when the link was shared, or at 1.2x with subtitles on.

3. Read the transcript

   The transcript runs beside the player. Strella generates it with speaker labels (the participant's name vs the moderator). The questions and steps from your guide appear inline (in gray) so you can see where each one starts. Search it with the search box at the top of the panel.

   As the recording plays, the transcript highlights the line being spoken. Turn on Scroll with video, at the top of the transcript, to keep that line centred as well, so you don't have to scroll to keep up. It starts off, because moving the transcript while you're selecting text for a highlight pulls the words out from under you.

   Turning it on takes you to where the recording is, whether or not anyone is speaking at that moment. In a pause it settles on the line that comes next, so you're in place before the speaker starts.

   With it on, the recording scrolls the pane while it plays, and you can't scroll by hand. Pause to read ahead or look back, or switch Scroll with video off to browse while it plays. Pressing play returns you to the line being spoken. Watching full screen leaves the transcript where it was, and leaving full screen moves you to the point the recording reached.

   The recording and the transcript scroll together in one pane. Following the transcript eventually scrolls the player out of view, and a small floating player takes over. On a phone or tablet there's no floating player, so the recording scrolls away. Close the floating player and it stays closed. A tab on the edge of the screen marks where it was. Click that tab to bring the player back without scrolling to find the video.

4. Add highlights

   Select any span of the transcript to save it as a highlight, a timestamped moment. The AI also auto-generates highlights on each interview.

   By default a highlight includes the preceding moderator question for context. You can toggle that per highlight if you only want the participant's reply in the clip later.

   Highlights are what get stitched into highlight reels: take them generously.

   

5. Review the summary, highlights, and profile

   Alongside the transcript, the session view has three tabs:

   • Summary: an AI-written one-paragraph summary of the interview.
   • Highlights: the saved moments for this interview (with a count).
   • Profile: the participant's screener answers and metadata, plus the audience they came through: the share link or panel order, by the name it has on the Audiences page. Use it to tell segments apart without going back to the participants table.

   

6. Regenerate the transcript if it's wrong

   From the actions menu (top-right), choose Regenerate transcript. Two modes:

   • 2 speakers: assumes the AI and one participant. Best for solo interviews (the default).
   • Multiple speakers: for interviews with more than one voice.

   Useful when the auto-generated transcript mislabels speakers or misses names. The recording itself is unchanged. Highlights you've added to this interview may be reset by a regeneration, because they're anchored to transcript timestamps: re-take any you care about after regenerating.

7. Exclude from analysis (if needed)

   From the actions menu, toggle Include in analysis off. The interview stays in Results, but Strella leaves it out of theme generation, the AI chat, and reports.

   Use this when a participant misunderstood the task, the recording quality was bad, or the session went off-topic. Analysis shows the interview greyed out with an "excluded" badge.

8. Delete an interview

   From the actions menu, choose Delete interview and confirm. Strella removes the interview from Results → Interviews, and it stops counting toward your completed-interview and recruitment totals.

   Deleting takes the interview out of the list, but a direct link to it still opens: if you bookmarked its URL or shared it (in a report, a reel, or a message), it loads with the recording, transcript, and highlights intact, with a Deleted badge next to the participant's name so you can tell. Deletion controls what appears in the list; it doesn't revoke links you've already shared.

   If a participant dropped out and rejoined, their interview has more than one recording, and the menu offers Delete Partial Interviews so you can remove just one. The interview stays in Results while any recording is left, and the recording you deleted disappears from the player and transcript immediately.

Tips

• Highlights are your most useful artifact. They're timestamped and the building blocks for highlight reels. Take them generously.
• Use the navigation arrows to walk through interviews back-to-back. The Profile and Summary tabs make it fast to triage which interviews are worth watching in full.
• Set your speed once. Pick the speed that suits how fast your participants talk; Strella keeps it for every interview you open next.
• Participants can't access their own interview. After a participant submits, they have no access to their recording or answers. The recording and transcript live only here in Results, visible to your team.
• Quality-check badges on each interview row flag fraud and quality risks. Each badge expands to show the full set of checks: completion percentage, response quality (rushing/one-word answers), response consistency, response timing, location consistency (browser timezone against the location the participant gave), and sensitive-content (MNPI) detection. Each check is Pass, Warning, or Fail with a short reason. The badges are guidance, not policy. Read the breakdown before you exclude an interview.

Related