Simulated sessions with AI participants
Real insight to validate against, in minutes instead of weeks.
Plenary Labs runs a moderated session with five to eight participants — each with a background, a history, knowledge gaps and a stated position — and hands you a report you can interrogate. A fraction of what a live focus group costs, and you read it the same afternoon.
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AI participants
Five participants, isolated for section 02. Private reactions were captured before the group round; no participant saw another's answer before submitting their own.
Three of five would install it. The blocker is bank access, not the $9.
Nothing in the stimulus moved anyone. One participant did. Lena's inventory of her own forgotten subscriptions reframed $9 as less than one forgotten chargeLena R2, and Priya's likelihood moved 4 → 6 in the same passPriya R2. Derek heard the same argument and never engaged with price at all — his objection was the permission, stated before the productDerek R2.
Every claim carries the utterance that produced it. Click one and you land on the turn, in context, with the private answer that preceded it.
What a concept test costs you today
Live focus group
- $6k–15krecruitment, incentives, facility, moderator
- 3 weeksscreening, scheduling, fieldwork, write-up
- 1 runchange the stimulus and you start over
Plenary Labs
- Per studyno recruitment, no incentives, no facility, no moderator day rate
- ~25 minsetup to readable report
- Re-runsame cast, changed stimulus, comparable row by row
The comparison is about speed and cost, not equivalence. A simulated session is not a substitute for talking to your actual customers — it is what you do before you have earned their time, and to decide what to ask them when you do.
The discipline is the product. The room is just how it runs.
Three constraints, enforced by the machinery rather than by a moderator remembering to.
Participants cannot be steered
Each participant knows only that others are present. No names, no profiles, no prior sessions, no access to another participant's private answer.
First reactions before group influence
Everyone answers the same four questions privately and at the same time, before anyone speaks. That round is captured and cannot be revised afterwards.
Every claim links to its utterance
No summary sentence stands on its own. If the report asserts it, you can reach the turn that produced it in one click — including the private answer that came before.
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PRPriya Raman
4/10
First thought
Nine dollars is fine. Which account does it touch?
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DHDerek Hollis
2/10
First thought
No third party gets my credentials.
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LVLena Vasquez
9/10
First thought
Finally. I do not have to find out what I am paying for.
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MBMarcus Bell
4/10
First thought
What happens in a month where it finds nothing?
A full room, convened for whatever you need to pressure-test
Focus groups are the first thing the machinery does, not the last. Any session with a running order and more than one mind in the room works the same way.
Pre-mortem
Cast the people who would be blamed and the people who warned you. Ask what went wrong before anything has.
Design critique
A room of practitioners with different tastes and different axes to grind, reacting to the same screen.
Red-teaming a plan
Participants briefed to find the failure. Isolation matters most here — one loud sceptic otherwise sets the tone.
Stakeholder rehearsal
Run the meeting before the meeting. The CFO who asks about margin, the lawyer who asks about consent.
Positioning test
Three ways of saying the same thing, put to a room that has never heard any of them.
Brainstorm
Private ideation first, so the first good idea does not anchor the other seven people in the room.
Private beta. We are letting teams in a few at a time.
Tell us what you would test first and we will get you a session to read.