Synthetic Users
A platform that simulates research participants with AI: interviews, surveys, concept tests, card sorts. Each synthetic participant has a distinct profile, and a study can be grounded in your own transcripts, tickets or customer conversations. Billed in tokens, with annual plans from $12,500. The vendor claims 85 to 92% agreement with real participants, measured by its own studies, and itself presents the tool as a discovery aid that does not replace research with real people.
Strengths
- Produces hypotheses and question ideas when you know nothing about a domain
- Lets you rehearse an interview guide before running it with real people
Limitations
- Synthetic answers collapse onto the most frequent response and lose the long tail
- Feedback too favourable and vague to tell whether an idea deserves investment
- Gaps between subgroups vanish: 93% of synthetic PMs use UX terms, against 44% of real PMs
- Even less reliable for niche populations that are thin online
- Annual plans from $12,500, with no free trial on display
Best for
- Preparing research: drafting hypotheses, tuning the questions in a guide