For researchers
Thirty interviews is a quarter’s work. A survey is a Tuesday. Neither gives you both.
Interviews give you the why and cost you weeks of scheduling, so the sample stays small. Surveys reach everyone and lose the why. distil is the middle: send one link, and each person has their own conversation with an interviewer that follows up on what they actually said. You still read the transcripts. You just get more of them.
What a participant gets
A short answer is where the interviewer starts, not where it stops. Here is one exchange from the example study.
I’m curious what led up to your decision. What was going on when you decided to cancel?
I canceled after clients kept emailing for bank details instead of paying through the app.
What happened when clients asked you for your bank details?
They’d hit a login wall before they could pay, then email asking me for bank details.
What you read afterwards
Your results update as conversations land: findings with attributed quotes, where participants disagreed, and what to do next. The summary is a map into the transcripts, not a substitute for them. It says when it rests on few conversations: the example’s own readout says six is “enough to spot these reasons but not to know how common they are.”
Before you trust it with participants
Who reads the conversations?
You do, through the study’s private link. The distil team may also read conversations to improve distil, and outside services such as OpenAI run the conversation and host the data, mostly in the United States. Respondents never see each other’s conversations. The privacy page names them and the retention.
Privacy →Can I get the transcripts out?
Yes. With your private link you can export every conversation as a CSV, one row per respondent with the full transcript in it. To have conversations deleted, email us from the privacy page.
What does a participant have to give?
Nothing but their answers. No account, no login, no form: they open your link and talk.
Does it replace my ethics process?
No. distil is a tool, not an approved protocol. Your institution’s review, consent wording and data-handling rules are still yours to satisfy, so check that the privacy page fits them before you recruit.
Extend your reach
Keep your own interviews for the people who need you in the room. Send the link to everyone else. If you want to see how it differs from a survey first, read the comparison.