AI in User Research – What It Can and Cannot do so Far?

User research plays a pivotal role in developing products and services that meet the needs and expectations of users. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), there has been an increasing interest in leveraging its capabilities to enhance user research practices. AI has the potential to automate various aspects of user research, but it is crucial to understand its current capabilities and limitations.

This article explores the role of AI in user research, highlighting what it can and cannot do so far.

Regardless of what you hear, AI will not replace UX researchers or designers, but will instead assist them. Though it can handle a variety of tasks, such as cleaning and organizing data and analysing it in depth, it cannot conduct in-depth interviews or focus groups with individuals because those require the “human touch.”

Here are some examples of how AI may legitimately assist UX and research teams.

Automating Data Collection and Analysis

AI technologies can significantly streamline data collection and analysis in user research. Automated tools can gather vast amounts of data from various sources, such as social media, online forums, and surveys, providing researchers with valuable insights into user preferences, behaviours, and sentiments. AI algorithms can then analyse this data to identify patterns, trends, and correlations that would be challenging to detect manually.

Eliminating Biases

User feedback is essential for creating effective products. However, the quality of your offering is only as excellent as the feedback you receive. As a result, you must ensure that your respondents are providing you with unbiased information. Otherwise, you risk driving your product off a cliff. And this is where AI, or AI-powered research tools, might help because they do not rely on stated responses.

What I mean by stated responses is that when you make a user complete a task, you ask questions, and users often answer these on a scale of 0 to 10, which introduces a lot of bias. The AI-powered tools include features such as session recordings and heatmaps based on eye gaze. You can quickly enhance user research and eliminate biases by applying these AI-driven user research tools.

Transcribing User Recordings

Conducting user interviews takes time but evaluating all the sessions to glean insights from them takes even longer. Transcribing tools, which have gotten easier and more accurate with AI, can help with the speedier recovery of critical user insights from these interviews.

You may transcribe live interviews as well as imported recordings using AI-powered systems. You can also get from user recordings to categorized, searchable excerpts in minutes. As a result, you can simply locate and publish the ‘moments of truth’ where the customer provided honest feedback throughout these dialogues. And a compilation of these highlights can be used to validate data-driven judgments.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) for User Feedback

NLP, a subset of AI, enables machines to understand and interpret human language. AI-powered sentiment analysis tools can analyse user feedback and reviews, categorizing them as positive, negative, or neutral. This capability allows researchers to extract meaningful insights from large volumes of user-generated content efficiently. NLP can also aid in identifying recurring themes or issues, enabling researchers to address them effectively.

Automated User Profiling

AI can assist in building detailed user profiles by analysing large datasets. Machine learning algorithms can process user data, such as demographics, preferences, and browsing behaviour, to generate comprehensive user profiles. These profiles can help researchers develop a deeper understanding of their target audience, enabling more personalized and targeted research efforts.

User Behaviour Analysis

AI-based technologies, such as eye-tracking, facial expression analysis, and gesture recognition, can capture and interpret user behaviour during user research studies. These tools provide objective and quantitative data on how users interact with products or interfaces. AI algorithms can analyse this data to identify usability issues, pain points, and areas for improvement, offering valuable insights to inform the design process.

While AI can save UX researchers a lot of time by automating processes and allowing them to focus on the underlying insights and data, AI should be considered as a supplement to user research rather than a replacement for it.

Contextual Understanding

AI struggles to grasp contextual nuances and abstract concepts that humans effortlessly comprehend. While AI can analyse vast amounts of data, it may miss the deeper meanings, emotions, or cultural references that are crucial in user research. Researchers must exercise caution when relying solely on AI-driven insights and should supplement them with human interpretation and understanding.

Lack of Empathy and Intuition

AI lacks the empathy and intuition that human researchers possess. It cannot fully comprehend the emotional or psychological aspects of user experiences, making it challenging to capture subjective feedback accurately. Human researchers excel at creating rapport, asking probing questions, and adapting their approach based on subtle cues, which are vital in uncovering deep insights that AI may overlook.

Ethical Considerations

AI in user research raises ethical concerns related to data privacy, security, and bias. AI algorithms heavily depend on the quality and representativeness of the data they are trained on. Biased data or biased algorithms can lead to skewed insights and perpetuate existing inequalities. Human oversight is crucial to ensure ethical practices are followed throughout the AI-driven research process.

Developing Queries and Asking Follow-up Inquiries

The major purpose of performing user research is to gain deep insights about users, which can only be accomplished by asking the proper questions and following up with further inquiries. However, AI cannot create inquiries or follow-up queries. Only UX researchers can delve further into user responses, using their judgment and experience to ask the proper questions and unearth insights that may not have been obvious from first user feedback.

AI has made significant strides in transforming user research by automating data collection, analysis, and user profiling. It offers powerful tools for understanding user behaviour and feedback on a large scale. However, it is essential to recognize its current limitations in grasping contextual understanding, empathy, and ethical considerations. By combining the strengths of AI with human expertise, researchers can harness the power of AI while ensuring a holistic and nuanced understanding of users. The future of AI in user research lies in striking the right balance between automation and human interpretation to deliver user-centric products and experiences.

***

If you want to dive into the specifics of the field, contact DigiTech Consult for any further information and consultation to begin your automation journey.