Fewer people than ever are willing to dig through old customer insights
“What I’m keen to try is repurposing old user research and hooking it up to an AI agent. It won’t replace talking with customers, but it might help guide us a little bit more.”
A design manager told me this, and he wasn’t alone. Among the 20 design leaders I interviewed, one everyday use case for AI emerged: creating a second brain for user research.
It tackles one of user research’s most significant flaws, and designers need to lead it. Why? Because we understand how users search for information.
The Reality of User Research Today
Few people read user research reports nowadays. It’s not because they’re bad: it’s because stakeholders don’t need reports. They need answers.
Right now, UX Researchers might spend weeks on a usability report: pages of insights, carefully organized findings, beautiful visualizations.
But the PM who said they needed it doesn’t read it. The executive who approved the research didn’t read it. The engineer who needs to understand effort doesn’t read it.