AI won't replace great UX researchers

The work that matters isn't the work that takes the longest

Lija Hogan, a Principal Customer Experience Consultant at UserTesting, began the webinar by acknowledging the reality facing many UX professionals today.

"We're being asked to incorporate AI into everything that we do," she said. "We're not being given the right tools or training or time to really come up to speed and be intentional about how it is that we incorporate AI into our workflow." She added that teams are trying to balance those expectations while dealing with layoffs and pressure to "do more with less."

That pressure has produced an understandable temptation: automate everything.

But the webinar argued for something much more measured.

AI is remarkably good at creating first drafts of moderator guides, drafting screeners, summarizing interviews, identifying patterns across hundreds of studies, and translating findings into different formats. Those are meaningful productivity gains. Yet none of those tasks represents the real value of an experienced researcher.

The best researchers don't simply collect evidence. They know which evidence deserves attention.

Don't outsource your curiosity

One of the webinar's most memorable observations came during a discussion about reviewing AI-generated analysis.

Researchers, Lija argued, shouldn't simply verify whether AI completed the task correctly. They should also deliberately look for the strange, surprising moments that AI might dismiss.

"We're looking for the outliers because they help us to push the boundaries of design," she said.

That's an important distinction.

Large language models excel at finding patterns. Designers often succeed because they notice exceptions.

It's the difference between seeing the forest and noticing the single tree that's somehow growing sideways. The pattern explains the present. The exception often predicts the future.

If researchers allow AI to flatten every anomaly into an average, they risk polishing away the very insights that inspire innovation.

It was a similar point that Chui Chui Tan made on a recent Insights Unlocked episode, talking about the risk of cultural bias in AI. You could have six countries saying trust is the most important factor, and all six could have a different definition of trust. AI would say trust is an important criteria, but a researcher would learn that it is really six different business problems not one.

The real opportunity is influence

Tom Charteris, UserTesting’s Senior Solutions Consultant for EMEA, reframed the AI conversation in a way many research leaders should appreciate.

"The value of freeing up the time with those types of tasks is that it unlocks... better research design, more thoughtful interpretation, stronger stakeholder conversations, recommendations—not just findings."

That shift matters.

Organizations don't hire UX researchers because they're exceptionally good at writing reports. They hire them because better decisions lead to better products.

If AI eliminates several hours of transcription or synthesis, those hours shouldn't disappear into more meetings or additional projects. They should be reinvested where humans create the most value: asking sharper questions, building stronger relationships with stakeholders, challenging assumptions, and telling stories that change minds.

In that sense, AI isn't replacing the researcher. It's quietly removing the administrative scaffolding surrounding the work.

The architecture remains entirely human.

As Lija reminded the audience near the end of the session, the goal isn't to use every new capability simply because it exists. "Try some new things that are interesting to you," she said. "That might be a little bit more challenging... and build [them] into a workflow."

Related insights

• Research in the age of AI: How to stay relevant, build trust, and prove your worth. This on-demand webinar explores how AI is reshaping UX research, why human judgment remains essential, and how researchers can increase their strategic influence within organizations.
• UX Research Leadership Playbook: Scaling Insight in the Age of AI. This playbook examines how UX research leaders can evolve into strategic business partners by scaling customer insights with AI while maintaining governance, quality, and human-centered decision-making. 
• Insights Unlocked – Ep. 172: Using AI to streamline and elevate UX research. In this episode, Google's Alita Kendrick discusses how generative AI can accelerate analysis, improve storytelling, and enhance UX research while preserving the researcher's role in interpretation and decision-making.
• AI Experiences resource page. This resource page is a one-stop shop for some of UserTesting's popular AI resources.