Free Lesson

Build an AI-Moderated Study in 15 Minutes

Part of Stop Waiting for Insights. Build the Agents That Get Them.

Hosted by John Whalen, PhD

Wed, Sep 2, 2026

4:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

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AI for Customer Research: Deliver Trusted Insights at Scale
John Whalen, PhD
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What you'll learn

Choose the right interview use case

Know when AI moderation fits and when human-led interviews are still the better method.

Write a protocol AI can follow

Turn research goals into clear sections, probes, guardrails, and stopping rules.

Review interviews before synthesis

Check transcript quality, participant experience, and missed follow-ups before trusting downstream analysis.

Why this topic matters

AI-moderated interviews can collect customer signal faster than traditional interviews, but only if the protocol is designed with care. A poor AI interview can wander, over-probe the wrong thing, or make participants feel like they are talking to a form. In this Lightning Lesson, John Whalen shows how to design an AI-moderated interview that stays aligned to the research question.

You'll learn from

John Whalen, PhD

CEO, AI Research Leader, Cognitive Scientist, O'Reilly Author

I’m CEO of Brilliant Experience, have a PhD in cognitive science, and wrote Design for How People Think (O’Reilly).

For 20 years, I’ve helped teams at companies like Google, GSK, and Capital One better understand their customers, capture insights, and build better products.

When AI started reshaping research, I got curious and learned. My team ran “AI vs. Humans” studies to see where AI excels, where human judgment matters most, and how to effectively blend both.

I’ll teach you how to create trustworthy AI research workflows that let you trace every step and insight.

Then advance to the next course and learn to orchestrate agentic research teams, work strategically with synthetic users grounded in real data, and bring in human judgement so you can scale research without losing rigor.

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