8 AI tools to transform your user research process

AI is speeding up processes across a wide variety of product development practices—and UX research is no exception. With the right AI companion, product teams can find new ways to optimize insight collection and inform product decisions with user insights.

From participant recruitment to optimizing analysis, UX professionals have a whole host of AI tools to choose from—but finding the right tool to balance your team’s budget and needs can be tricky. To speed up your selection process, we’ve scoured the top tools and listed our top eight in this rundown.

AI currently supports UX professionals in a plethora of ways, from generating new content, analyzing vast amount of user research data, and providing predictive insights, to optimizing processes and streamlining workflows.

It’s continually evolving—meaning more and more applications of AI in research are emerging as the technology develops. For example, initial applications of AI in UX research only allowed text generation, but now UX professionals can generate visuals with AI, too.

However, worry not—AI isn’t here to replace you.

“Currently, AI tools play more of the role of research assistance,” says Yelin Jo, UX Researcher (PSP) at Starbucks.

At Maze, we agree. AI should be used to support your user research methods—think of it as the trusty sidekick to your superhero.

Artificial intelligence has the power to transform your entire UX research process through automation, content generation, data analysis, and more. You can use it any and all stages of the user research process.

As AI and UX research combine, many new AI tools enter the marketplace to provide better insights and make work easier. Here are some of the different types of tools helping UX professionals create better user experiences:

Integrating AI-powered tools into your research workflow allows for a transformative approach to research and UX design. Here are just some of the benefits of using AI in your UX research process:

Adding some AI-powered tools to your UX research process can make a big difference—whether it's taking care of repetitive tasks or digging deeper into user behavior. Here are our top eight AI-assisted tools for UX research, and what they’re best for.

Maze—the continuous product discovery platform empowering teams to conduct in-depth, remote user research—offers AI solutions to improve the user research process. It’s ideal for teams looking to blend human expertise with AI efficiency.

Maze AI can help speed up the data collection and analysis process, providing in-depth insights for informed design decisions. Automating little and often throughout the research process allows your team to focus on creative and strategic aspects of UX design, fostering a user-centric design process.

Matthieu Dixte, Product Researcher at Maze, shares how he uses Maze’s AI capabilities to enhance his research work: "I use Maze AI primarily for refining question formulations, simplifying research summaries, and auto-coding survey results to quickly visualize key themes. Using AI here saves me a lot of time to focus on more strategic analysis."

Maze offers pricing options for organizations and product teams of all sizes, including a free plan for a taste of what’s possible with Maze. The Starter plan comes in at $99 per month and provides added features and greater flexibility, while custom pricing for the Organization plan includes extra studies and additional solutions, like Card Sorting and Tree Testing.

QoQo is a great AI companion for UX designers and offers a structured method of user persona generation. When you provide input—like demographic data or user behaviors—QoQo creates UX personas that capture user goals, needs, motivations, frustrations, and tasks. Of course, they’re not perfect—but AI-generated personas are a great starting point.

QoQo offers a suite of user experience tools, including persona generation and journey mapping, for $15 per month. There’s also a 2-day free trial so you can try before you buy.

Synthetic Users offers AI-driven virtual research participants that simulate real user behavior and preferences. Create synthetic participants based on everything from demographic data to Myers-Briggs personality traits, then watch these artificial participants interact with your designs in a controlled yet realistic testing environment. While we wouldn’t recommend user testing solely with virtual participants, it’s a useful way to check tests, ensuring precise evaluations and iterations before you engage with actual users.

Synthetic Users offers a free plan for up to 10 interviews per user/month. The paid plans offer additional interviews, starting at $480 for a 100 Interviews Pack and rising to $1250 for a 500 Interviews Pack.

Neurons Predict, developed by Neurons Inc., empowers user research by accurately predicting customer responses. It uses eye-tracking simulations, heatmap preference tests, and an extensive dataset from real consumer responses to identify how users interact with or respond to different visual elements.

Neurons Predict doesn't currently list pricing on its website, but you can reach out to them for custom pricing. Some sources suggest pricing starts around $5000 per year, not including the set up fee.

Ando is an AI co-pilot that makes the design process more intuitive and efficient. It uses machine learning to generate design ideas and offers creative suggestions directly within the Figma environment.

Ando is a free Figma plug-in—simply install it and you’re good to go.

Now for one you’ve definitely heard of—ChatGPT. OpenAI’s natural language processing (NLP) model creates human-like text, based on the prompts you give it. It's ideal for generating persuasive UX copy, crafting user journey narratives, or producing engaging content for your interfaces.

ChatGPT is free, but you can upgrade to the paid plan for $20 per month to get faster response times and priority access to new features and improvements.

Notion AI enables you to improve existing content, generate summaries, and draft new text within Notion. It automates tasks, predicts results, and generates content outlines and summaries from a single line of text.

Notion AI is available as an add-on to existing Notion plans, starting at $10 per member/month.

Recraft AI offers an AI artboard for generating and editing vector art, icons, 3D images, and illustrations. You can edit vector art, icons, and illustrations for rapid prototyping and refine visuals based on user feedback or project requirements.

Recraft AI offers a free plan that enables you to generate images that are stored in the public library. The paid plan costs $25 per month and provides faster image generation and a private gallery.

One thing’s for sure when it comes to AI—the more info you give it, the better the output you receive.

Matthieu Dixte, Product Researcher at Maze, suggests, “instead of leaving AI to generate from scratch, give it precise prompts makes its output more relevant and precise.”

Here are some more actionable best practices to ensure you’re maximizing the potential of AI tools without compromising on research quality:

So, with all these options, how do you find the right tool for you and your team?

Here are some key considerations to keep in mind when making your decision:

Make sure your chosen tool can support your business objectives. If analyzing user feedback is holding you back and hindering decision-making, find an AI tool that speeds up the process. If UX copy creation is stopping you shipping new features and acquiring new users, opt for an AI tool that can help generate copy.

Here are some thoughts from Yelin Jo, UX Researcher (PSP) at Starbucks:

“To begin with, businesses should be well aware of what their business objective is and how AI could help with achieving the outcome. The expected return must be in sync with your investment in the AI tool to make it worthwhile.”

Your main goal is finding an AI tool that helps solve the problem you’re experiencing—whether that’s inefficient workflows, a lack of design resources, or something else.

However, it’s a good idea to also consider secondary benefits provided by AI tools. Think about whether the AI tools you’re comparing offer additional features that could benefit other areas of your UX design process.

For example, Maze AI offers a number of different AI solutions: not only can you optimize UX surveys with the Perfect Question feature and generate dynamic follow-ups, but you can also use AI to analyze moderated interview studies andextract key themes.

Does your chosen tool provide the data security measures you require? Review the tool’s data handling practices and encryption methods to ensure they adequately protect your (or your users’) data. You also need to consider if the tool abides by local data protection laws, industry standards, and ethical guidelines. Otherwise, you risk damaging the customer relationships you’ve spent so long building and developing.

Overall, when creating your ideal AI-powered UX research tech stack, prioritize tools that are intuitive, provide valuable insights, and have reliable support in case you need assistance. While you don’t need every tool on our list, you’ll find some great combinations and collaborations when it comes to harnessing the power of AI.

Maze’s AI functionalities ensure that each step in your research process complements your UX/UI Design tools, usability testing tools, and product discovery tools. Plus, you get access to 50+ pre-built research templates and integrations with popular design tools like Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD—and the ease of exporting digestible reports, positioning your team to make data-driven decisions confidently.