Key settings
Title and Overview
The Title is how the interview appears in your dashboard. It’s for your own reference and is never shown to respondents. The Overview is the most important field. It tells the AI what you’re trying to learn — think of it as the research brief the AI reads before every conversation. The richer and more specific your overview, the more precisely the AI will probe and follow up. The overview is always private; respondents never see it.Questions
Questions are the topics you want the AI to cover. You can add one or more, and the AI weaves them into the conversation naturally — respondents never see the list, so the experience stays conversational rather than quiz-like. Each question has a Follow-up Depth setting that controls how aggressively the AI probes that topic:| Level | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Low | Take the first answer and move on — good for factual or demographic questions. |
| Medium | Ask one follow-up only if the answer is brief or vague; otherwise move on. |
| High | Always ask one follow-up regardless of the answer. |
| Deep Dive | Drill in with 2–3 rounds, pushing for specifics, examples, and feeling. |
The AI dynamically generates its own follow-up questions based on what respondents actually say — you don’t need to pre-write every possible probe. The follow-up depth setting tells it how much to dig, not what to ask.
Default Mode
Sets whether respondents land in text or voice mode when they open the interview link. Respondents can manually switch modes before starting if you allow it. See Text vs Voice for a full comparison.Access
Controls who can start a new conversation:- Open — anyone with the link can respond immediately, no credentials required.
- Access Code — respondents must enter a code you share with them before they can begin. Useful for private research panels or internal studies.
Language
The language the AI will use throughout the conversation. You can enter it however you like —"English", "français", "polite Japanese" all work. The AI adapts its entire conversational style to match.
Persona Instructions
An optional free-text field where you can steer the AI’s tone, personality, and style. This is your escape hatch for voice and emphasis — for example:“Be warm and casual, dig into emotional reasoning, don’t accept surface-level answers, ask about specific examples.”Persona instructions shape how the AI interviews without overriding the platform’s structure (one question at a time, depth rules, proper wrap-up).
Public Conversations
A toggle that controls whether respondents can view each other’s transcripts after completing their own conversation. When enabled, each completed conversation gets its own shareable URL athttps://listen.land/c/[id]. Off by default — transcripts are private unless you opt in.
Interview lifecycle
Interviews move through the following statuses:| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Draft | You’re still configuring. The link exists but won’t accept new conversations. |
| Active | The public link accepts new conversations. This is the live state. |
| Paused | The link resolves but rejects new conversations (respondents see a paused notice). Any conversation already in progress can still finish. |
| Closed | The interview is done. No new conversations. The link shows a closed message. |
Create your first interview
Step-by-step guide to setting up and launching an interview.
What is a conversation?
Learn what gets captured each time a respondent replies.