Summary

• HEARD enabled Character.AI to conduct 1,200 user interviews in just three days and build a Use Case Taxonomy that aligned internal teams around the key product use cases.
• Before HEARD, the product team struggled to understand how and why millions of people were using the product. The insights gathered revealed goals and motivations, as well as top feature requests for each use case which helped the team prioritize their product roadmap.
• The research revealed new opportunities for growth by identifying new priority use-cases to focus and highlighted privacy concerns that prevented users from sharing the product and driving viral growth.
• The use case taxonomy and visual aids fostered empathy within the organization, helping all teams align with user needs.

Meet Misha

‍Misha is a veteran UX research executive with extensive experience at McKinsey and Lyft. Now, he helps fast-growing consumer companies build strong UX research processes as their user base scales.

“I specialize in helping early-stage startups refine their customer understanding, identify untapped business opportunities, and build products that resonate with their target audience."‍

‍
Character.AI is a consumer product that enables people to create and customize chatbot characters that they can speak to for any number of use cases, like creative role-play or learning a new language. Misha was brought in to help the team wrangle user insights after they had quickly scaled to tens of millions of users within just a few months of release.

Until that point, the company had gathered most of their product feedback from channels like Reddit and Discord. To drive the next phase of growth, they needed formal insights that would help them move beyond early adopters towards new, mainstream audiences.

With such a popular product that could be used in many diverse ways, the product team struggled to really understand user goals. While they had descriptive analytics about the types of actions people were taking on the platform, they wanted deeper insights into the "why" behind the behaviors: what are motivations and goals that drive people to use our platform?

Without these insights, the product and marketing teams struggled to prioritize initiatives that would have the most impact on user growth.

Goal: create a Use Case Taxonomy that would map out how people used the product

Misha recommended that they begin by creating a Use Case Taxonomy: a map of the motivations, goals, and needs for each of their top use cases. The taxonomy would also describe which features were the most valuable and what challenges people had as they used the product.

To build the taxonomy, Misha wanted to balance deep qualitative context with robust quantitative data. The team didn't want to make decisions based on evidence from a handful of conversations. To create a rich map of how millions of people were using the product, it was important to collect insights from a diverse, representative sample of users.

Traditional in-person interviews would have taken weeks, which the team couldn't afford. Surveys, while faster, wouldn’t capture the nuanced, qualitative context they needed.

"The founders were very numbers-driven, and the product team questioned whether a few user interviews could truly represent the diverse experiences of their global customer base. They wanted to see more tangible evidence," Misha said.

Misha chose HEARD because it allowed the team to gather qualitative insights at the scale of their large user base
‍

Misha chose HEARD because it allowed him to conduct open-ended, qualitative conversations with users at scale—without spending weeks on scheduling and moderating interviews. HEARD’s scalability would enable Misha and team to see real patterns and trends emerge from the insights.

Misha also needed to scale himself as the sole UX Researcher on staff. HEARD would free up time for him to spend on higher-value strategic work with the product and marketing team.

Additionally, HEARD's AI chat moderator aligned well with the primarily Gen Z user base who were comfortable chatting as a way to express their opinion.

“HEARD’s shared chat-based interface and conversational style was a natural fit with a chat-based LLM. And we were confident that their Gen Z and Gen Y user base would be open to using a more unconventional tool. It was really a no-brainer.”

‍To create the taxonomy, Misha built a discussion guide that prompted participants to share deep context on how they were using the product, from the actual steps they took on the platform to the impact the product was having on their daily lives.

A diverse set of users representing different markets and levels of engagement participated in short, chat-based interviews. Afterwards, the AI synthesized the top themes across these conversations and generated a summary report for Misha and his team.

Results: HEARD delivered actionable insights within across thousands of users in a few days
‍

In just three days HEARD conducted 1,200 user interviews, delivering deep contextual insights into how users engaged with the product. Misha was able to create a detailed use case taxonomy, backed by qualitative and quantitative data, along with user quotes.

Users also gave positive feedback on the interview experience.  “HEARD's integration with Chracter.AI was so seamless that one user even asked if it was part of the AI itself, saying, 'Are you the voice of Character.AI? I've always wondered.'"

HEARD helped the product and marketing team build out their strategy and prioritize their roadmap

• Focused the Product Roadmap: HEARD produced a list of the most required features per use case, which the product team used to prioritize their roadmap.
• Identified Growth Opportunities: The taxonomy revealed that one emerging use case had promising growth potential. By focusing on this use case, they could expand to new audiences with a large addressable market and a higher willingness-to-pay than early adopters.
• Identified Growth Barriers: The interviews uncovered issues around privacy that were impeding growth. As a result, the product team began to develop features to make privacy more transparent.
• Building Empathy Across the Team: Misha created a simple yet powerful visual slide listing the key highlights of each use case in a single table. This visual aid became an important tool for fostering user empathy across the organization.

Misha now sees HEARD as an invaluable tool for any high-growth startup looking to scale their UX research efficiently. 

"HEARD has been a game-changer, allowing me to scale my research efforts, gather qualitative insights at speed, and deliver the kind of empirical evidence that data-driven founders demand. It's a must-have tool for any high-growth startup looking to better understand their customers and identify new growth opportunities."

‍