Rosenverse
Improving Democratized Research with CustomGPTs and Gems

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

Improving Democratized Research with CustomGPTs and Gems

Wednesday, February 25, 2026 • Rosenfeld Community

This video is featured in the AI Trends in User Research playlist and 1 more.

Share the love for this talk
Improving Democratized Research with CustomGPTs and Gems
Speakers: Mike Oren
Link:

Summary

One of the biggest concerns researchers have when having any designer or product manager conduct their own research is that they'll ask biased or bad questions. In theory bad research done by a product team should be accountable to them but since there's a team named "research," that can inevitably fallback on us. We've all offered training to teams at some point but you can lead a horse to water but not force them to drink. Enter AI - your partners will want to use it because it helps them get something they don't usually do (write discussion guides) faster and by writing custom Gems or GPTs, the research team can keep consistency, ensure the AI pushes back in the right way for quality, etc.
In this session, I'll cover how to build these and the instruction sets I provide to the tools.

Key Insights

  • •

    Custom AI GPTs can provide guardrails to help non-researchers conduct higher-quality user research.

  • •

    Splitting AI tools into multiple specialized GPTs prevents context overload and hallucinations.

  • •

    Researchers save over 80% of their time by using AI to support routine research planning and execution.

  • •

    Automating recruitment and incentive tracking through Google Sheets and Zapier reduces manual effort.

  • •

    AI can improve research consistency by enforcing unbiased question guidelines and avoiding leading or double-barreled questions.

  • •

    Limitations remain in AI’s ability to synthesize large transcript sets and provide fully accurate quotes.

  • •

    Democratizing research allows product managers and designers to engage more closely with customers while researchers focus on strategic insights.

  • •

    Avoiding shadow AI tools is critical for organizational security and compliance.

  • •

    Video analysis and unmoderated usability testing can now be partially automated using custom GPT Gems.

  • •

    The future of UX research may shift toward researchers providing ‘forest-level’ insights while PMs/designers handle ‘tree-level’ tactical research.

Notable Quotes

"We call ourselves a B2C CRM: helping businesses connect to their consumers and keep the relationship going."

"Before AI, research teams spent over a quarter of their time consulting about research questions, often repeating themselves."

"One of my biggest pet peeves is biased questions; I hate the term validation, I prefer evaluation."

"If we’re not helping with the decision, why are they paying us what they’re paying us? That’s the essence of research."

"We want to make sure researchers spend one hour in office hours, not eight to twelve hours a week helping others."

"Designers and product managers often want more control, and custom AI gives them that in research tasks."

"The tools are meeting people where they’re already going: ChatGPT or Gemini, rather than forcing new platforms."

"Shadow AI usage is a huge security risk in public companies and should be managed by IT and leadership."

"We ask our AI assistants to explicitly avoid leading and double-barreled questions to ensure unbiased research."

"The future is researchers painting the larger picture while PMs and designers focus on deep, tactical user insights."

Ask the Rosenbot
Erin Weigel
UX Lessons from running more than 1,200 A/B Tests
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Dan Willis
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Prayag Narula
Empowering Designers to do Good Research
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Scott Jensen
Short Take #2: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Shanti Mathew
Civic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
David Conrad
The Feeling of Data
2023 • Enterprise Community
Sheryl Cababa
Thinking in systems to address climate with Sheryl Cababa
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group
Alberto Ferreira
Making it Count: Developing a custom digital metric framework that works
2021 • QuantQual Interest Group
Stefanie Owens
Optimizing for Outcomes: Transformation Design in Systems at Scale
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Maria Taylor
Knowledge is Power: Managing the Lifeblood of the Design Org
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Dawn Ressel
Full-Stack User Experiences: A Marriage of Design and Technology
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Davis Neable
How to Drive a Design Project When you Don’t Have a Design Team
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Greg Nudelman
Designing Conversational Interfaces
2019 • Enterprise Community
Greg Petroff
Software as Material—A Redux
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Sarah Fathallah
Lessening the Research Burden on Vulnerable Communities
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Andrew Michael
Building a Product Insights Team
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold

More Videos

Dr. Karl Jeffries

"Design ops has the opportunity to set a new default future, not follow the path set by the past."

Dr. Karl Jeffries

The Science of Creativity for DesignOps

January 8, 2024

Amy Marquez

"Find your senior executive ally who understands design and go talk to them first — it works."

Amy Marquez

INVEST: Discussion

June 15, 2018

Steve Portigal

"Enterprise UX is still nascent—businesses worldwide are just beginning to figure out where UX fits."

Steve Portigal Chris Chapo Kelly Goto Christian Rohrer

Discussion

May 13, 2015

Alicia Mooty

"How do you organize a design team to work within a changing environment without freaking everybody out."

Alicia Mooty

Design Staffing Models

September 30, 2021

Ana Maria Montero Barrantes

"Puppetry lets you communicate like, I don’t like what you said, how come you said that to me."

Ana Maria Montero Barrantes Aditi Dhar Michelle Kaplan Nate Osborne Matt Laurence

The Authentic UX Talent Show

January 8, 2024

Lada Gorlenko

"You can’t really advocate for UX or move an organization forward without interacting with your team and business colleagues."

Lada Gorlenko Sharbani Dhar Sébastien Malo Rob Mitzel Ivana Ng Michal Anne Rogondino

Theme 1: Discussion

January 8, 2024

Sofia Quintero

"We think about research as the magnetic field that attracts every part of the business into alignment around the customer."

Sofia Quintero

The Product Philosophy Behind EnjoyHQ

March 10, 2021

Laura Klein

"Nobody loves it when someone from another department shows up to tell people how to do their jobs better."

Laura Klein

Unique challenges of innovation in enterprises

April 23, 2020

Andrew Michael

"Existing research repositories die at the bottom of slide decks; that’s why I started Everywhere to rethink how we manage insights."

Andrew Michael

Building a Product Insights Team

March 10, 2022

Latest Books All books