AI for Strategic Research: Deepen Your Insights Without Automating Your Craft
Ann Conway
Amplify CEO & Human-centered AI leader
Learn to use AI as a thought partner to elevate the quality of your work.
If you're a UX researcher, designer, or PM who wants to use AI to meaningfully power your work, this course prepares you to collaborate with AI as a thought partner—not a replacement. You’ll learn a practical, repeatable research process that helps you go deeper, move faster, and produce more credible insights while keeping the parts of research that require skill, judgment, and empathy firmly human-led.
How this course is different:
Most programs focus on AI tools, AI-moderated interviews, synthetic users, and automated analysis. We believe this approach is risky: at best, it produces shallow “research slop,” and at worst, it can hurt your credibility.
In this course, you’ll design your own human-led research process and integrate AI where it adds real value.
You’ll learn:
• How to communicate in iterative dialogue with AI as a teammate (not just write prompts)
• Synthesis methods that use AI to stretch your thinking and build on your ideas
• How to verify insights for credibility, evidence, and usability
By the end, you’ll be able to run an AI-supported research workflow that elevates the quality of your insights and your role as a leader.
What you’ll learn
Master AI-supported research: deepen your synthesis, accelerate ResearchOps workflows, and confidently defend the quality of your insights.
Identify where AI adds value, structure the right balance of human-led vs. AI-led tasks, and confidently guide an end-to-end process
Lead back-and-forth prompting that challenges assumptions, expands ideas, and deepens insight quality without letting AI take over.
Clean, structure, and annotate transcripts so AI produces more accurate, higher quality, and consistently evidence-backed insights.
Compare human-led and AI-assisted synthesis, refine themes through dialogue, and explore alternative framings, tensions, and meaning.
Learn prompting techniques to extract insights and needs, develop frameworks and personas, and support with evidence and quotes.
Practice starting on your own and using AI to push your thinking further, and starting with AI to spark your own insights synthesis.
Apply quality checks to assess accuracy, bias, traceability, logic, and stakeholder credibility, and build your own Insights QA workflow.
Explain your process, articulate where human judgment led the work, and communicate insights with clarity and confidence to stakeholders.
Craft your personal Designer Value Statement to advocate for your role with teams and clients.
Learn directly from Ann
Ann Conway
Founder & CEO of Amplify, helping leading brands use AI to transform their work
Who this course is for
Anyone doing user research who wants to move faster and improve the depth and quality of their insights.
Research and Design leaders who need a clear, structured approach their teams can use to work faster, scale research, and stay consistent.
Product managers using AI to scale and democratize research who need a structured approach that preserves depth, quality, and human insight.
What's included
Live sessions
Learn directly from Ann Conway in a real-time, interactive format.
1:1 consultation with Ann
We'll meet at the beginning of the course to discuss your goals, needs and experience.
Weekly live demos
Watch as we walk through each week's course activities live - including AI-supported methods for research prep, synthesis, concept generation, and more.
Weekly Feedback Lab
Share your work, get direct critique from Ann, refine your prompts and synthesis in real time, and watch how your peers strengthen their own.
Applied AI Toolkit
The Methods Playbook (23 step by step AI-supported design research + strategy methods), prompt tear sheets, and your Personal AI Toolkit.
Lifetime access
Go back to course content and recordings whenever you need to.
Community of peers
Stay accountable and share insights with like-minded professionals.
Certificate of completion
Share your new skills with your employer or on LinkedIn.
Maven Guarantee
This course is backed by the Maven Guarantee. Students are eligible for a full refund up until the halfway point of the course.
Course syllabus
16 live sessions • 7 lessons • 12 projects
Week 1
Jan
6
Demo: Design your AI-Supported Process
Design your AI-supported process
Jan
9
Friday Feedback Lab
Week 2
Offload tedious tasks to AI
Jan
13
Live Demo: Offload tedious tasks to AI
Jan
16
Friday Feedback Lab
Free resource
Evaluate the quality and accuracy of AI insights
14 methods to audit AI-generated insights
A checklist of steps to test AI’s accuracy, coherence, and relevance, and flag insights that misrepresent real data.
Prove (or disprove) AI’s reasoning
Learn how to make AI “show its work” and trace each theme back to evidence, not assumption or generalization.
A quality workflow that builds trust in your work
A repeatable framework for judging AI Product, Process, and Performance quality, and communicate it to stakeholders
Schedule
Live sessions
2 hrs / week
Live project demos Tuesdays at 11 am CST and Feedback Lab on Fridays at 11 am CST.
Tue, Jan 6
5:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)
Fri, Jan 9
5:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)
Tue, Jan 13
5:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)
Course project
2 hrs / week
Self-guided work on a real, end-to-end research and strategy project (qualitative interview data will be provided).
Testimonials
I can't imagine anything more! You have taken an ambiguous & complex topic and succintly captured how it can aid an already complex & ambiguous creative process 'Design Research & Strategy'. Your exhaustive materials and pristine presentation were so aptly curated, it inspires confidence to tackle this nascent untamed construct 'AI', so thank you Ann!
Shilpa M
Lead UX Researcher- My partner and I were thrilled to participate in your webinar. It's one of the most valuable sessions I've been in in years, and immediately changed the way we're working. THANK YOU. We were both incredibly impressed with the range of strategic to practical content and the wealth of resources you shared.
Sara F.
VP, Design + Product - I had the pleasure of attending Ann’s Designing Alongside AI webinar and was deeply impressed—not only by the rich content and thoughtful structure, but also by her generosity in making these insights broadly accessible. Ann went above and beyond by sharing materials and refer
Malini R.
Product Design Leader - Ann’s webinar was one of the most useful sessions I’ve attended. Clear, practical, and well-structured, it offered a thoughtful playbook and resource list that I’ve already returned to more than once. Ann has a real gift for making complex ideas actionable and accessible. I’d recommend it to anyone looking to navigate design in the age of AI.
Lili N.
Product Strategist & Researcher - I recently attended Ann’s session Designing Alongside AI and found it both highly relevant and practical. As a designer and researcher, I was seeking a clearer picture of the evolving AI-integrated research horizon, and her webinar provided exactly that. Ann’s insights into human-centered AI were particularly valuable, highlighting how designers ca
Anwer A.
Assistant Professor + Designer I really enjoyed Ann’s webinar, Designing Alongside AI—it was practical, engaging, and full of use cases that are directly relevant to improving my design research. I’m excited to keep learning from Ann and the amazing work being done at Amplify, and I look forward to joining more of her webinars in the future.
Cecilia H
Product + Experience Designer
Case study of an AI-supported research and strategy project
Methods Playbook: 23 AI-supported methods to apply to UXR + strategy
AI Insights Evaluation Toolkit
Frequently asked questions
Free resource: The AI-supported Methods Playbook
Download this playbook to start incorporating AI thoughtfully into your practice, without losing quality or human judgment.
Inside, you’ll find 23 design and research methods for framing, discovery, synthesis, and concept development. Each includes step-by-step instructions, sample prompts, common mistakes to avoid, and advice on how to balance human and AI roles.
Join the next cohort of the AI-Supported Design Research Process to define your own end-to-end design process and practice using these methods in a real research project with expert support.
$650
USD