Synthetic respondents can give us convincing answers in seconds. But in the quest for efficiency, brands risk losing the real power of research: empathy, and the advantage it brings.
Much of the debate about synthetic research focuses on speed, cost and accuracy vs. older methods. But there's another question worth asking: what happens to the quality of our understanding of our audience, customers or users when we remove real participants from the process?
Ask a synthetic persona or group whether it would switch to a new streaming proposition and you'll have a response in seconds. It'll probably be thoughtful, articulate and full of convincing reasons. It might even be right, if a little overly positive or generic. It's easy to see the appeal for teams under pressure to move quickly.
But without spending time with real people, how much are we really learning? Will we understand how the proposition fits with their needs, tastes, mindsets and everyday lives? Will we uncover opportunities that shift our thinking, spark original ideas and lead to something that genuinely stands out? The best research briefs challenge agencies and consultancies like us to move thinking forward, not simply provide answers to a set of questions. That's where much of the real value of research lies.
Anyone who's spent time researching real people knows that their needs, motivations and choices are rarely neatly packaged. Averages can be useful, but they rarely capture the richness and messiness of individual lives. People's choices are shaped by relationships, circumstances, moods, routines and compromises, often in ways they don't fully recognise themselves. Getting to grips with this means spending time with different people, in different situations, seeing their world through their eyes and developing the empathy that leads to better understanding.
Answering the big questions is a human-centred craft
Most briefs we get at Waveform start with big, ambitious questions. Which audiences should we target? What do people really value? What drives their choices? What jobs are they trying to get done? Where are the opportunities for brands to stand out and make people's lives better?
These aren't questions we'd expect participants to answer directly. Our job is to design research that gets beneath the surface, exploring what people say, what they actually do and the often complex relationship between the two. Through observation, conversation and exploration, we start to piece together the bigger picture, uncovering the needs, motivations and tensions that shape behaviour and choice.
Along the way, we often discover things we weren't looking for: an improvised workaround, a throwaway comment, a frustration someone has accepted as normal or an emerging behaviour that hasn't yet found its way into the data synthetic models learn from. These moments can challenge our assumptions and point towards unmet needs and new opportunities.
What a streaming study revealed
In a study we ran for a streaming service, we used a 'switching diary' study and follow-up contextual interviews to uncover the behaviours and emotional needs that hadn't surfaced in the client's previous research or the published industry studies available to them. The approach was designed to get closer to the truth of people’s choices and motivations, we never asked them what their needs were explicitly.
We saw families getting stressed because they couldn't agree on what to watch, people arriving home exhausted and needing something to lift their mood, and passions for niche content that sent viewers on a hunt for more of what they loved. We saw the importance of shared cultural experiences, people moving between devices while doing household chores, and the comfort of having the TV on in the background, even when there's nothing worth watching.
Together, these experiences, and many more like them, revealed the different roles streaming played in people's lives: bringing families together, providing an escape, comfort and reward, anticipation, companionship or a sense of belonging. And these needs weren't fixed. They changed with people's moods, circumstances, who they were with and even the time of day.
These insights shaped a new Jobs-to-be-Done framework, segmentation and personas all grounded in real behaviour. Seeing people's experiences unfold helped us bring them to life for the client, building empathy and understanding of not just what people needed, but why it mattered to the choices they made.
Could synthetic respondents have identified some of the same needs? Some of them quite possibly. But some of the crucial value from the study were areas the client hadn’t seen before. Those that weren’t in their huge research libraries or those of the industry bodies who have published audience needs studies. These areas would not have been surfaced because they came from spending quality time with real people, getting close to their actual experiences.
Empathy can be a powerful catalyst for action
Anyone who's worked in research knows the impact a real participant's words or experiences can have on a room full of stakeholders. A short video clip, a revealing quote or the chance to hear directly from customers can bring an issue to life in a way that even the best-written report struggles to match. You can see the moment something clicks, an assumption is challenged or a new idea starts to take shape. Often, these human moments provide the inspiration and conviction to act on research, rather than simply acknowledge its findings.
This is empathy in action. It's not just about helping researchers understand people better, but helping everyone involved in shaping a brand, product or service feel closer to the people they're making decisions for. A synthetic respondent might generate a compelling quote, but it can't provide the authenticity of hearing a real person talk about something that genuinely matters to them.
Inspiration rarely comes from the average
Synthetic models learn from existing information and patterns, so their responses can gravitate towards what's already familiar. Yet some of the most interesting opportunities for brands are found away from the average. Think about the customer who has abandoned a brand, the niche audience whose needs have never been properly served, or the early adopter already doing something the rest of us might do in a few years. These are often the people who challenge our assumptions and point towards new opportunities.
They may also be poorly represented in the data models learn from. Real research allows us to deliberately seek them out, understand their experiences and explore what makes them different.
Building empathy doesn't have to be slow or expensive
All this might sound time-consuming and expensive, but getting close to people's lives doesn't have to mean months of in-person ethnography. Technology or ‘ResTech’ if that’s still a thing, has made it easier than ever to spend time with people wherever they are, capture experiences as they happen and involve more varied audiences.
There are lots of ways to do this:
Diary studies: capturing moments over days or weeks, revealing habits, emotions and frustrations that memory might otherwise edit out.
Mobile and video ethnography: observing people's lives and behaviour in their own environments, including through footage they capture themselves.
Contextual inquiry: watching people carry out everyday tasks and exploring what's happening in the moment.
Product and service trials: seeing how experiences change over time, once the novelty wears off.
Online insight communities: building ongoing conversations and following up on interesting themes as they emerge.
In-home and video depth interviews: understanding someone's world, with room to follow the conversation wherever it leads.
Shop-alongs and 'show-me' sessions: letting people walk us through how they really do things.
These methods deliver fresh insights and understanding that feeds into journey maps, Jobs-to-be-Done frameworks, segmentations and propositions, helping turn research into ideas and decisions grounded in real people's lives, rather than imagined customers.
Synthetic research has its place, but it's no substitute for the real thing
At Waveform, we're keeping up with developments in synthetic research, but we don't use synthetic respondents or data in our projects. Not because we're against technology. Quite the opposite. We love technology that helps us reach more varied audiences, capture experiences as they happen and make research more engaging, efficient and affordable.
Synthetic research may have a role in exploring ideas or certain types of evaluative work, where the questions are well formed and its limitations understood. But for the exploratory, generative and strategic research we do, we believe real people are essential.
As synthetic responses become increasingly convincing, the temptation to treat them as a substitute for real participants will grow. The risk isn't simply getting the wrong answers. The greatest value of research isn't always in the answers it produces, but in the human understanding it creates, the assumptions it challenges and the action it inspires.
That's why empathy matters more than ever.
