AI x UX Research: Embracing Efficiency Without Losing Empathy

Its tough competing with the summer when it comes to meet-up events. In a choice between a beer garden on a sunny afternoon or an event about product experimentation and CRO many would choose the wrong path.

To make sure we could compete we were offering a couple of genuinely fantastic speakers. and Camille Bouly, Senior Solutions Engineer from US company Launch Darkly.

In a lot of ways its astonishing we've made it through five events before someone brought the topic of AI to the table. But what a wonderfully introduction it had as Emma Travis, Director of Research at Speero, looked at the intriguing topic of AI in the UX Research space. Coming from 14yrs analysing the behaviour of emotional, irrational, impulsive & contradictory users, she discussed some of the challenges that exist with the introduction of the 'synthetic user'. There were some wonderful examples of how AI results perhaps didn't quite capture the unpredictability of humans.

Of course there are gains to be made, and the concept of the trade-off triangle to find that compromise between confidence/speed/cost was introduced.

Finally there were some practical, easily implemented takeaways for UX researchers and ways in which Emma did see AI offering valuable time-saving support.

Following that we had Camille Bouly, Senior Solutions Engineer from US company Launch Darkly who was talking about the virtues of full stack experimentation and how it can drive value. He covered the importance of its integration into the release process and some of the benefits of doing so before diving deeper into measurement of some of the more operational metrics.

This included ensuring companies were able to observe close to the change that was being made and how doing so can lead to quicker diagnosis, easier rollbacks and ultimately greater control and comfort.

Having covered a broad range of topics around CRO and experimentation it was fantastic to continue to broaden the community we are creating by bringing in tech and UX researchers. And it seemed to resonate with the breadth and number of questions received after each talk.

Another great evening and new found proof that Experimentation North CAN compete with the summer holiday season!