How User Interviews Can Be Accelerated with an AI-Powered Insights Platform

"Nobody skips user research because they don't care about users. They skip it because the last time they tried, two weeks of recruiting ended with three cancellations. The sprint didn't wait. Someone made a judgment call, the feature shipped, and everyone quietly agreed they'd do it properly next time - which is what they said the time before that too."

"A 45-minute conversation with a user isn't what kills research timelines. What kills them is everything around it. Recruitment for a niche persona can take three weeks on its own. Then you're coordinating schedules across time zones. Then someone's dog has a vet appointment and they reschedule, which cascades into your analysis window."

"This is what researchers mean when they talk about the infrastructure tax. The research itself is a relatively small part of the timeline. The coordination surrounding it is enormous. AI platforms specifically target that tax. Not the conversation, but everything before and after it."

Teams abandon user research not from lack of commitment but from operational friction. Recruitment for niche personas takes weeks, scheduling across time zones creates cascading delays, and post-interview work—transcription, tagging, synthesis—extends timelines until decisions are already made. The actual interview represents a small portion of research timelines; the surrounding coordination consumes most time and resources. AI-powered research platforms target this infrastructure burden specifically, streamlining recruitment, scheduling, transcription, and analysis rather than improving the conversation itself. Understanding this distinction clarifies what these tools can realistically accomplish and where they provide genuine value for research teams.

Read at Business Matters