The BEST Personal Assistant

If a bot can raise a duckling, then why can’t it help with my homework? Image from nerdist.com & Wild Robot

This week I piloted a chatbot for qual research. While I may have been skeptical at first, I must declare…. SHE DELIVERED! A few months ago, I hosted a series of interviews in order to inform my multiple choices for a survey. Pretty standard consumer research fare. This was effective and I was happy with how qualitative research (interviews) laddered up to quantitative research (a survey), but it’s always so time consuming. I wasn’t looking for shortcuts, but I am certainly always interested in timesavers. 

Last week, I was introduced to this new tool (which I’m feminizing going forward b/c she’s MY personal assistant) and after a little bit of thought & the aforementioned skepticism, I decided to give her a whirl. I decided to go back to the original line of questioning and see how similar the feedback seemed, with a chatbot, not me, doing the follow-up questions, analysis, and reporting. The respondents were real (I feel that’s a line I don’t want to cross– we have to have real respondents, not modeled respondents…. I think…for now). 

So, while I drove to the clarinet store to pick up a repaired clarinet, drove my daughter to guitar lessons, helped my son make Butter Chicken Wings, and walked the dogs, my chatbot was busy finding respondents, directing them through a line of questioning (that she helped me with, by the way, after I fine-tuned the objectives), and probing open ended responses. Nearly 24 hours later, I had a report….and it was EERILY SIMILAR to my original work. 

Wow! I’m now a believer that we can have AI collaborators. While I wanted the benchmark to be that the work felt similar, I need to admit that it was actually BETTER than my original version. AI can be more thorough in reporting that I have the patience to be. AI research and reporting can stay true to the original objectives and not get distracted by stakeholders & special interests along the way. Really, BETTER than me, but I also still play a crucial role in directing and aligning the research.

I also have a list of modifications I can make to work with the tool better next time. One part that I did not like was that I couldn’t check in & follow along. Part of qualitative research is that you have the ability to test & learn. You can course-correct when needed, but with a 24-hour field time, there’s no opportunity for this. In the future, I have a few ideas, including doing micro-rounds of interviews to slow down the process. Truly, in what world are we living where I need to conform to the bot and plan around HER schedule?? Complete role reversal?

I do look forward to the day she can chauffeur my children and supervise the kitchen (or maybe she can make the Butter Chicken Wings too!) and I can chill on my unicorn raft all day long.

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