10 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.

Our 2025 Future of User Research Report found that:

With opportunities like these, it’s no surprise that many are adopting AI to help simplify insight collection.

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 ten in this rundown.

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

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 at any and all stages of the user research process.

According to our 2025 Future of User Research Report, UX professionals use AI for:

And for good reason: teams integrating AI into their workflows are seeing measurable benefits. They’re handling large datasets faster, delivering research findings more quickly, and scaling their efforts without increasing headcount. Plus, AI is also helping teams personalize user experiences more effectively by processing and responding to user behavior at scale.

Overall, automated workflows powered by AI streamline complex processes, making research projects easier to manage and execute.

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

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 ten 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 research 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. There’s a Free plan for individuals looking to kickstart user research and testing, and Enterprise options for teams looking to scale research.

The Enterprise plan provides added features for greater flexibility, including custom study quantities, additional research solutions—like Interview Studies, Card Sorting, and Tree Testing—and access to mobile testing through the Maze Participate app.

QoQo is an AI-powered persona generation tool built on OpenAI and currently available in beta as a Figma plugin. It 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 $7 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 and spot early pain points, 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. Paid plans start at $2 per interview and range up to $27 per interview depending on scale and features. Surveys cost $5 per synthetic user, with an additional $5 for RAG enrichment.

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 $5,000 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 offers a free plan with access to GPT-4.1 mini and limited GPT-4o features. The Plus plan costs $20 per month with extended access to advanced models and tools. Pro is $200 per month with unlimited access to all models, including GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, and OpenAI o3-pro. Team starts at $25 per user/month (billed annually) and includes admin controls and shared workspaces. Enterprise pricing is custom and built for scale.

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 offers a Free plan for individuals and a Plus plan at $12 per user/month for small teams (with a limited Notion AI trial). The Business plan at $24 per user/month and Enterprise plan (custom pricing) both include full access to Notion AI, along with advanced features like AI Meeting Notes, Research Mode, and Enterprise Search.

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 Pro plan costs $12 per month, and the Teams plan costs $69 per month.

Stitch is Google’s AI-powered design tool, rebranded from Galileo AI. Product designers can generate high-fidelity UI mockups from text prompts in seconds. Whether you’re sketching ideas or drafting user flows, Stitch helps you move from concept to visual quickly—ideal for validating early-stage ideas before investing in full design or testing cycles.

Stitch is currently in beta and free to use.

UXPin Merge AI helps bridge the gap between design and development by turning your design components into actual working code. Instead of handing off static designs, teams can use Merge AI to create fully interactive prototypes that sync directly with your design system or component library. It’s especially valuable for UX teams working closely with engineering to speed up delivery and reduce design–dev inconsistencies.

UXPin Merge AI is available on the Merge AI plan at $49 per editor/month (or $39 per month when billed annually). Higher-tier plans like Company ($149 per editor/month) and Enterprise (custom pricing) offer additional capabilities like Storybook integration, Component Manager, and advanced security controls.

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 and extract 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. With smart features like bias-free question drafting, theme clustering, and auto-generated summaries, Maze speeds up your research process and helps you make sense of the data.

Plus, you get access to 50+ pre-built research templates and integrations with popular wireframe and design tools like Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD—and the ease of exporting digestible reports, positioning your team to make data-driven decisions confidently.