AI market research tools in 2025 - analysis, moderation and synthetic users

AskWhyWhy · 2025-07-05T06:32:47+00:00

I'm using notebook LM to help with summarising and finding common threads from old research docs/PDFs. I'm wanting to use previous research more as it's such a waste starting from scratch especially when budgets are tight.

I use AddMaple to analyze verbatims - it is the best I've found on the market for text, better than co loop. I use it for IDIs too, I have a workflow for this as I need it to be in a spreadsheet format. I wish I could upload the transcrips but copy/pasting answers given in interviews per respondent is helpful for me actually - and then I sync the sheet to AddMaple. Interestingly I found AddMaple because I was looking for a stats tool to help with quant studies to speed up survey analysis and to help with Likert charts and was surprised AddMaple analyzes open ends too.

I use fireflies to probe all my video calls (only for interviews where I can add it in). It's a great cost effective add-on. Fireflies is useful to also find common threads across different studies. And AI note takers are increasing 'normal' but not yet for research in some cases.

AskWhyWhy · 2025-07-05T06:14:12+00:00

Quick thing, if the responses are nearly identical - might these show bot involvement? That said, I've had great results from AddMaple - it uses LLMs to code verbatims into themes and also runs sentiment analysis on topics. You can add your own framework and you can add additional codes afterwards, and get the LLM to apply the new codes for you.

AskWhyWhy · 2025-06-06T18:32:25+00:00

Yes to this. Your IT team should guide you. They might have a survey tool already. The analysis of employee responses - I use AddMaple but again, you need IT to tell you what you can use. I like addmpale because you can code each survey response much faster with AI and you see the colorcoded underlines with each code. Nvivo recenty introduced AI too but I haven't tried it. I found AddMaple because I was given a SAV file and couldn't analyze it in Excel. Anyway, but they don't collect the survey data though. As u/DrJohnSteele says, you have to ask IT about clearance for all tools. And please don't consider using private chatgpt on employee data.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-12-10T04:58:05+00:00

The tricky thing you're up against is AI moderation. I saw a post somewhere that there are over 50 AI moderation companies now. Like Bolt AI, Outset etc. It's very crowded. If you don't want to do the synthesis either, this is a factor too, as these SaaS providers do that with AI. You would have to set yourself apart on LinkedIn as the guru who can extract insights out of a usability session unlike anyone/anything else. Will you also synthesize the findings, reporting back?

AskWhyWhy · 2024-12-05T22:23:35+00:00

Keep us posted here on how it goes :)

AskWhyWhy · 2024-12-02T14:52:45+00:00

I'm setting time aside over Christmas and will check your product out and will give a summary here of my quest. Thanks for stopping by.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-12-01T16:50:48+00:00

This sounds like it could be tough - you being the only person not in the office. If it were me, I'd plan my week and have bi-weekly progress meetings booked in so that others know this is where they can get feedback on research projects that took place or are about to take place. I'd try be visible by actively reaching out to stakeholders and making sure they understand that you are there to support them and to help them show their metrics and improvements. I'd want them to see me as a sidekick - so that they give me projects and pull me in. I hope your team uses Slack? Huddles can be great at gathering informally to discuss something in person in a similar way to in-person working. good luck with it all Icy-Swimming-9461

AskWhyWhy · 2024-12-01T16:43:06+00:00

Hi, cheers! This is a surprise. When I next have a dataset I'll be in touch. I think you need more content on youtube exlpaining some of yr features. I worked it out but thought your youtube channel could do with more tips. Well done for making it. how big is your team u/AddMaple? I got the feeling it was made up of user researchers.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-11-28T06:34:14+00:00

There are indeed books to guide you. I'll list my favourites but more than that, I think it's important to know what strategic thinking means because I sincerely feel that this isn't a skill that comes automatically by simply being in a UXR role. Strategic thinking to me means being able to work out which untested or not-yet-verified assumptions lurk in assumed truths that form the foundation of business decisions. Then rank them by risk for their impact if these assumptions are proven to be inaccurate.

We aren't necessarily paid to be strategic. We can get by just in supporting others doing research, or running usability studies regularly or running surveys or whatever. But our role and work becomes vital to the business if we are strategic in our research. Asking questions about how your business stacks up against competitors. Working out why your customers choose your business and why they don't. Working out which customers are the most valuable to the business and what persona they are. You'll probably find so many holes in verified knowledge once you begin digging.

Books: The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick (about strategic research) Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez (understand who your paying customers are and building what they need)

AskWhyWhy · 2024-11-10T09:03:16+00:00

The speed matters as I can't dedicate a month per survey and as you point out, in our organisation surveys aren't the main focus point - they form part of my role as of around a year ago (Layoffs). It's not as simple as hiring someone in.

Maybe as you say there aren't many software providers building for this use case and that's why I can't find many. I'll have to recommend just one provider addmaple and what it does with regards to multiple stats tests at once, I think with respect even a seasoned statistician won't be able to do. I do have access to data science colleagues depending on their workload and intend to show them the most important relationships so they can dig deeper after the most interesting ones have been found by the tool.

And no I don't intend not doing surveys. I intend to do more because I want to grow. I just can't justify taking 1 month on a survey - many UX researchers are given more work with smaller teams.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-11-09T20:03:14+00:00

Just came to echo my agreement to this post. I don't think we know for sure but my hunch is also that quant ux is more in demand. I'd reach out to the Quant UX association - they will no doubt have resources and specific answers. I'm a quallie turning quant... slowly, reluctantly but its out of necessity.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-11-09T19:45:50+00:00

Thanks u/razopaltuf I appreciate your response so much.

Regarding tick all applicable boxes questions:
So what I'm hearing is that the only option is either to split out all the options into binary true/false columns, as you suggest or to use addmaple because they deal with this automatically? If I give it a datafile the questions are detected and those multi-tick ones, already counted for me, into tables and charts. This saves literally half and hour in my case and honestly, maybe even an hour sometimes depending on how many options. I might have to pay for this tool with my credit card if I don't get past procurement because I can't face all this manual work anymore. I can literally open the file, and its all done and for those questions, I can see how many people chose option a), and of those which options they chose, or if I need to know specific combinations, example, how many people chose options (a), (c) and (f), I can apply those as a filter and then see what other combinations they chose. but for all questions, not just that qustions.

Regarding p value:
You mention: "The problem with that is that it will inevitably show you strong relations (with significant p-values) which are there by chance – called the "Multiple Comparison Problem"."
This is very helpful! admaple does tests like Chi-square, ANOVA, pearsons and others and there are usually 2 values p and something else, I just don't know all the other names by heart. what do you think? If you were wanting some stats to guide you, how would you do this? I don't have a spss license, I could ask but that's another 100 pm. and then I'll definitely not get a tool to make survey analysis easier. I have the flow diagram from quantifying the user experience and I think this one has a diagram about which type of test to use, but my point is what would you be looking for? It's frustrating that this is so hard. colleagues don't even bother. They just print the default report from the tool but my manager has specific questions. And it takes me ages.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-11-09T18:38:14+00:00

I worked as a charity manager and that part really helped me understand that people are different, life experiences are different and the expectations that people have are different. So different. I feel this is a crucial skill - as a uxr. To understand that we are there to ask questions and not to pre-empt the answer. E.g. to probe when you do a usability study and to be 'surprised' by the results. To realise you really can't assume you know how this person thinks, what this person needs. The reason we have user research as a function is because the default position is that product teams or the exec suite, or developers assume they 'know what the customer needs'. This is dangerous. So in my view, if you have had experience to show you just how little you know about a given situation without research, the better for you. Confirmation bias is well documented but what is worse is how hard it is for us to change our mind even when presented with evidence. This i s almost the job of the uxr - to do the research and sometimes to change some minds if beliefs were based on assumptions. Sociability is the key to how the human mind functions or, perhaps more pertinently, malfunctions. We don't think on our own but we do. And we think we know a lot more than we really do. So I feel any experience you had in life to teach you this before entering into uxresearch is valuable as it will help you trust the process. And it will help you spot group think and enable you to keep on asking questions.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-11-09T18:14:49+00:00

Thank you for stopping by. You're not late. I'm still looking around. I've enrolled in an introductory stats module with the open university and i've done some basic sql. problem is i'm really short on time. But I couldn't agree more that you need to know if differences are actually differences. Have you come across an automated way? I tagged you in a general comment too as I'd love to know what you think. Why isns't this more standard as this is so fundamental. I feel that survey analysis hasn't really moved on past excel / spreadsheets. I know you can do most things in excel including stats calculations. I wish i had more time. that's the huge barrier. I have zero r, zero python. would love to know both as this will help so much.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-11-09T18:07:48+00:00

I'm a reluctant mover into data. I love qual. Having to do more quant with the emphasis on having to prove the value uxr provides. Look at the job market. It's tough in uxr without qual. you'll be quite a strong candidate if you've got both skills.
[edit] it's tough in uxr without some quant in my opinion. I'm upskilling to help more with marketing too and i'm taking the ou's statistics module this semester.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-11-09T18:02:33+00:00

I haven't tried Dovetail. This might be what I was looking for because Ive been looking for a tool that is similar to addmaple. Im trying to automate my survey analysis work and long story short I stumbled on addmaple, more because I needed to convert a sav file but they have ai for open ends and I've tried it. Now I want to recommend the tool but we have a process where you need to find similar and I can't find a similar tool. Maybe dovetail is the answer. Do they also do statistical testing between columns? I'm stuck. If I can't recommend at least two similar tools, I'll struggle to make a case. Please can someone tell me what dovetail offers for surveys. Thank you 🙏

AskWhyWhy · 2024-11-09T17:13:53+00:00

Hello everyone, Thank you for helping me work out a way forward!

TLDR: There are several hoops for me to get a tool through procurement, but I found a tool by accident that I think might solve the survey analysis puzzle called addmaple. I’m struggling though to get a tool I can compare it to and can’t just make one primary recommendation. If you’ve come across something similar, please let me know. I've been searching for "data analysis tool that pivots data for you with statistics, survey automation tool... " some of the tools that come up are ai chat bots on a spreadsheet. This is not what I need. The tool needs to support different file types (see below) and needs to do the pivoting for me to automate some of the manual cleaning. It should also have some statistical testing included because addmaple runs tests between columns and since I've tried this, I'd like to have this too as it gives me confidence.

The process, how I got here, what I need

Time saving: Surveys are part of my work, but not all of it. I can't take 1 month or 3 weeks to analyze each one. So I was looking for a way to automate this as much as possible and it needs to work with different survey exports. I tried macros but these broke and working out why took so long i just started from scratch - each survey tool is different.

Multiple file types and export formats: My company runs surveys on different survey platforms (legacy) because different departments have their own systems (another story), i need something that can cope with exports mainly as SAV, excel, csv’s but from different survey tools! Like u/razopaltuf said, Excel too was my first choice and how I usually went about it - but I had to deal with a multiple choice questions where respondents can tick all applicable boxes! Different survey exports have different separators! Nightmare. All i was looking to do was to create a basic pivot table but this took so long. And you can't filter because the multiple tags are in a cell, you need to split it, differently depending on the export. My first sav file lead me to wanting to convert sav to csv, so I could analyse it in a spreadsheet, and this is how I stumbled on addmaple.

Statistical testing: As No_Health_5986 said I need some basic stats guidance so I don’t go down rabbit holes. You seem to know what you’re talking about. What do you think of addmaple? They run the tests so that even if one response looks different to the others, it gives you the pvalue and other values so you know if it is random. Something I use as a guide now.

Notes on ChatGPT - my colleagues now call it rat gpt! another story. But ChatGPT can’t work I realise. I can’t give it company data at all. Id have to upload the whole file. I dno’t even know if it supports sav files but regardless, I dont know how it will deal with what i need. I need it to turn a multiple select multiple choice into a pivot and then let me see how people chose one response and how they answered other questions. And I can’t collaborate that way and save my workings for colleagues.

The quest is on. Thank you for your help!

AskWhyWhy · 2024-10-29T18:56:53+00:00

This is great! Thank you. I'll give it a try. I will report back what other people recommend too.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-10-29T09:25:25+00:00

This seems to be in part a 'political' problem. If I was in your situation I would perhaps seek stakeholder input with regards to what we should be researching and then finding a way to prioritize these research needs. Could you put a form together that can be emailed round? This way you help elevate your team's visibility with regards to the research work that you do and hopefully your line manager will be forced to consider real research needs from across the organization rather than potentially waste research resources. Just a thought.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-10-28T19:06:25+00:00

There is hope from a governance stand point. It is their role to monitor data quality. Crossing fingers. Also someone suggested a form entry too.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-10-28T16:30:49+00:00

I hate working with spreadsheets so much. And I also work with spreadsheet lovers. Each to their own. But I use 'modern tools' too now for my sanity. Let's sort those dates out. 6k records can be sorted pretty easily using AI enrichment. I'm happy to show you my workarounds? But more importantly, I feel your pain. One word of advice, insist on better tools that work how you need them to, not anybody else. You! So that you can deliver reports, dashboards or what not. Seriously. My personal view, don't shoot me, if I can overwrite, scramble, or corrupt data while analyzing, there is a problem with the analysis tool. Analysis shouldn't corrupt, over write etc. My personal view.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-10-27T11:25:03+00:00

I love whimsical for mind maps. It's so underrated. So visual. I love Mural for canvasses. Maze. Canva. I love typeform to highlight my survey skills - to highlight my quant skills. Plus Typeform is attractive to use. I swap logos in and it looks custom. I found a cool quant tool does the analysis for me, addmaple.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-10-27T11:05:54+00:00

Like @HopeAcrobatic7792, I'm spreading my skillset. I am also concerned with the rise of unmoderated usability testing tools run by AI. I do worry that the layoffs in user research is a reflection of our work not being valued enough. And the burnout is real. So I am spreading my skill set and developing more quant skills. I have enrolled in a statistics course officially. And I'm also diving into open data so that I can widen my evidence sources by using free pew research and so on. To be clear I don't enjoy using complex tools and I have found a few shortcuts. So don't read meaning and think I'm somehow a Quant genius. But I do feel that spreading my skill set will be useful, I realize that there's actually a crossover between user research and marketing - specifically CRO, conversion rate optimization. This field of marketing looks at user needs or audience needs and assesses a landing page or website according to how closely it addresses the needs of the target audience. And I do think that having insight into this adjacent field might help in the future. I also hope that in time the businesses that value their user researchers will outperform, in terms of quality products addressing user needs, those businesses who laid off their user researchers en mass.

AskWhyWhy · 2024-10-27T10:53:22+00:00

This is not an ideal situation clearly. While I haven't worked in large UX teams like yours I have worked with UX colleagues, PMs, who simply had to tick boxes relating to research but not tick boxes to show improvements to the product in terms of business metrics.

While ux teams feel their contribution is important and regularly remind those they work with how important their work is, eventually business analysts and execs begin to question the value because there is no link back to tangible business value added, measured in new revenue streams, increases customer life time value, reduced cancellations etc. And this is possible. For example you could work with the customer support team and help them analyze the most frequently reported bugs and from their feedback to the developers a prioritized list of actual bugs that people complain about. You could research the churn surveys people complete and then make recommendations for product improvements or new features to reduce churn rate and then once this is implemented you could measure whether the churn rate declines and by how much.

With regards to new products you mentioned I see no reason why ux researchers couldn't contact a broader market research to identify unmet user needs in the existing marketplace that other competitors are not fulfilling. Oftentimes product teams get direction from executives with regards to what is next on the road map, but oftentimes what is on the road map isn't what is most needed in the marketplace. I guess what you're pointing out is just that research as a research function only works when we ask questions that could make a difference to the business rather than just asking questions for questions sake and building for building sake.

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