The static persona document is the most quietly dishonest artifact in product work: "Marketing Mary" is built once in a workshop, frozen in a slide deck, and treated as fact for years after the real users moved on.

AI qualitative research is a methodological shift, not just AI-powered transcription. A 5-step workflow with humans framing the question and validating insight, AI doing the messy middle.

UX research has been stuck at n=5 because of researcher economics, not methodology. AI moderation lets you run 200 structured interviews in days — and changes what research questions you can answer.