Let’s not debase ourselves as user researchers further

Maybe you just hate or don’t get AI

Au contraire! AI can be magical (especially in medical imaging and programming). I used Gemini to update a SQL query recently at the encouragement of a data science peer. I use a product called Granola (not a paid mention, fwiw) for call transcription, notes organization, and pulling up quotes. I work with designers who spin up prototypes with Figma Make that I then test with humans. I work with engineers who use AI for spam mitigation and trust and safety tasks. Jess Holbrook smartly advocated for using AI to take a dissent pass on research artifacts and to challenge yourself and your findings.

What I don’t do is use generative AI or LLMs to spit out an entire research plan, synthesize hours of interviews, or conduct my interviews for me (?!). One reason why I don’t do any of these is that generative AI can’t replace the meaning-making that human researchers do. Why would we even want to use AI to replace the tasks that humans are uniquely good at, or the tasks that humans enjoy, or the tasks that connect us to other humans? To me the personal connection is the best part of being a user researcher or user-centered designer!

This is what gets my goat: AI has many useful applications. This moment in time really is akin to the start of the internet era, in that AI has broken containment and entered mainstream conversation (in no small part due to marketing hype centered on illogical use cases). However, the hype has created acolytes with an ill-fitting solution to the non-existent problem of how to study humans better.

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