Agentic Workflow in Qual Analysis

It’s an eerie feeling, building the blocks of my behavior into a digital doppelgänger.  Kind of like digging my own grave…

For UX research, qualitative analysis has been considered untouchable since day 1 of the AI wave.   There’s a lot of risk in misinterpretation.  But it’s one of the most time-intensive parts of the research cycle; it would be a huge win to automate.  

My team and I had tried many prompts with genAI to accelerate qual analysis, but most of the outputs were janky.  Either too light or too inaccurate to be that useful.  At best we got a thin report outline that was missing nuance and key insights.

Agentic AI changes this.  We can now decompose complex tasks like qual analysis into manageable and iterative pieces.  

Below is a 5-stage strategy I'm testing to automate qual this way. Tasks are deconstructed into stages to ensure deeper and more reliable insights. The AI self-audits for confidence and accuracy.  And the human researcher pops in at critical stages for course correction.   

It'll take iteration to get right. But if it holds up, it hands back hours while leaving the researcher in charge of the final verdict and creative solutions.