The Future is Bright for Qual (with AI)

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We’re living in exciting times because qualitative research is going through a renaissance right now. For years, I’ve seen that corporations have preferred quant over qual for decision-making, but with new AI methods, we now have the ability to do qualitative research AT SCALE! 

This is EXCITING because I’ve long thought we were missing some rigor when it comes to qual reports. So many times, I’ve been wholly inspired by a few consumers, I re-tell their stories, I have a handful of product ideas immediately, I re-visit their experiences….but when I see the final report, it’s missing the things I thought I heard and saw. Or it’s all reduced to a few bullet points. 

However, this is also DISHEARTENING because I can now see qual just becoming quant. We’ll have a show-reel, we’ll have a nicely-done report without a lot of heavy lifting, it’ll be super efficient (and inexpensive) – but we’ll be missing a lot. 

The beauty of qualitative research is that it’s immersive. You’re meeting consumers. You’re letting their experiences unfold in real time. You’re building empathy for your consumer. I learned from a journalist that when entering a room, immediately write down 5-8 observations (the lighting, the furniture, the floor coverings, the mood, etc.) I started doing this with in-home interviews and it helped immensely for re-telling a story later. The context matters. How the room looks and how it makes me feel matters. 

I come from the product design world where seeing consumers use products first-hand is paramount to how we design – seeing user interaction, sources of frustration, sources of satisfaction, mis-use--- these are all so important – and I think this will all get lost in our yearning to quantify. Try as we may, I have a hard time believing that AI shortcuts will ever measure up. 

Me in the past AND the future

I think there will eventually be a correction and we’ll go back to truly valuing being in the room, back to conducting a small number of qual interviews (hopefully in homes). But we won’t truly be returning to the 2010’s. We’ll be able to use more advanced text analytics for reporting. We may use AI in more ways than I can even imagine right now, but I think it will need to live alongside actually being in the physical room with consumers. In the future, I think we’ll place MORE VALUE on real life, in-person qualitative research than we do now, boosted by more researchers having more exposure to the richness and possibilities of qual through our current AI quantification of qual.

What do you think? I’m happy to connect and discuss how AI will boost (or detract) from qualitative research!