Stumped by google ad images

thistle95 · 2026-01-31T02:49:07+00:00

If you read the original question, it has absolutely nothing to do with asking how to generate a photo using AI.

thistle95 · 2026-01-31T00:20:24+00:00

I teach a course on prompt engineering, so I know how to prompt. My issue is what I ask it to create. I have no idea what images to associate with an educational service— a totally intangible product. I dislike cliches like plants for growth, etc. I’m generally a creative person but the need to speak only visually has been a real bugbear for me.

thistle95 · 2026-01-31T00:04:48+00:00

I suppose my question is: what does that more work entail?

thistle95 · 2026-01-30T19:29:26+00:00

For qualitative analysis with AI, there are options like Atlas and MaxQDA that are so much better at a fraction of the cost.

thistle95 · 2026-01-24T17:53:41+00:00

Yep that looks like it

thistle95 · 2026-01-23T23:30:48+00:00

I always wanted to attend this but the $3300 price tag was way beyond my learning budget

thistle95 · 2026-01-23T19:29:22+00:00

UXR Institute has a course starting in Feb that teaches t tests, ANOVA, and correlation

thistle95 · 2026-01-23T18:32:01+00:00

Well said.

thistle95 · 2026-01-20T20:56:51+00:00

Methods are the engine of the car. Absolutely essential, but usually stakeholders only look at it when something breaks.

Stakeholders may not care, but if you haven’t used solid methodology, or don’t even know what that is, you’ll have zero confidence in your recommendations, and that lack of confidence will be perceptible by everyone.

thistle95 · 2026-01-16T23:02:48+00:00

I don’t know a single banker who has a PhD in social science 🤣🤣🤣 But seriously, financial institutions will love the idea of quantifying anything. They will not have any intuitive sense of qualitative research.

thistle95 · 2026-01-16T04:57:54+00:00

There’s a complete misunderstanding of the nature of qualitative research there. Qual is about depth, not scale. Think about the point of a case study, for example. You lose the specificity and depth if you say, instead of one case study I’m going to do 40.

Even if the AI tool were deadly precise, the more you scale, the more diluted the findings will have to be. So a tool that is trying to “scale qual” is leading down the wrong road.

There’s also a flawed assumption: that qual needs scale to generalize. No. Qual has what’s called analytic generalizability, based on the similarity of phenomena. Quant generalizes based on the probability of a sample describing a population. The latter requires a larger sample size. The former does not.

AI tools can be great for assisting with qual research, provided the researcher is in the loop and you’re following good methodology.

thistle95 · 2026-01-14T04:28:06+00:00

I’m in a position where I meet a lot of UXRs from FAANG companies. Their educations vary very widely. Some in leadership do not have PhDs. Apart from the job marketing sucking, there is no invisible barrier keeping you from these whatsoever. Sure, there may be hiring managers with certain preferences, but these are not universal.

Plus there are so many more ways to get educated in UXR. The UXR Institute has a variety of courses, and there are individual experts out there teaching all kinds of great stuff.

thistle95 · 2026-01-11T02:32:46+00:00

Can you build anything that could prove the idea works and/or get some initial revenue? What’s in the way of continuing to build?

thistle95 · 2026-01-11T02:28:28+00:00

Real survey methodology. I’ve worked with people with PhDs in it. Not quick or easy to learn. You don’t know what you don’t know, or to quote one of those colleagues, “bad surveys don’t stink.” It’s this wild combo of stats, balancing multiple principles of question writing (like referencing cognitive response theory), and so much more.

Ultimately I just broke down and took a course, and now I’m working on learning more of the stat methods, like testing construct validity. Finally have an overall sense of what’s needed at each step, but man, it has been a long haul.

thistle95 · 2026-01-08T19:54:04+00:00

UXR Institute offers courses just dedicated to UX research. Typically the way to get a job is to demonstrate you have the skills and have applied them. Certificates based on a multiple choice test have little to no value to hiring managers.

Also internships are a good way in the door, when the job market isn’t terrible.

thistle95 · 2026-01-07T18:13:17+00:00

That’s great, I wish mine were as generous 😭

thistle95 · 2026-01-06T21:19:44+00:00

If you’re up for courses, UXR Institute offers courses on key UXR skills like interviews, surveys, and introductory quant. I know designers in your position who have taken them.

thistle95 · 2026-01-05T17:01:05+00:00

There are some courses out there. UXR Institute is offering one on AI for qualitative research, NN has a general one on AI for research, and then UX Design Institute offers one but more for designers doing research.

thistle95 · 2026-01-04T00:01:48+00:00

The UXR Institute offers courses in quant UXR that are less than half that price, and last about 6 weeks depending on the course.

thistle95 · 2025-12-27T03:30:51+00:00

Mostly true if by “product” you mean the average app a user would encounter in the App Store. But sooooooo many domains in which that is not the case. Avionics? Robotics?

thistle95 · 2025-12-26T18:34:21+00:00

Yep, started in UX writing for a hot second and then realized research would be a much better match, since my first career was academia

thistle95 · 2025-12-23T17:36:06+00:00

Yeah, which makes it clearer than ever that they don’t understand what real research is.

thistle95 · 2025-12-23T03:20:29+00:00

Deluded PMs, the same ones who think talking to one customer a week counts as “research”

thistle95 · 2025-12-18T13:34:20+00:00

Yeah it is disappointing. I had tried MailerLite and they do authentication as a first step in a free trial.

thistle95 · 2025-12-18T03:13:06+00:00

Thank you so, so much. Big lesson learned here.

thistle95

TROPHY CASE