How to Run 50 User Interviews in 10 Minutes

Traditional user interviews take 2-4 weeks from recruiting to insights. With Synthicant, you can run dozens of synthetic interviews in a single sitting. Here's exactly how.

Step 1: Create your persona (2 minutes)

Go to your dashboard and click + Manual Persona. You'll see five OCEAN personality sliders:

• Openness — How receptive are they to new ideas? High openness means they're curious and willing to try new things. Low means they prefer the familiar.
• Conscientiousness — How detail-oriented are they? High conscientiousness means they read the fine print. Low means they skim and decide fast.
• Extraversion — How much do they engage? High extraversion means they'll volunteer opinions freely. Low means you need to draw them out.
• Agreeableness — How confrontational are they? Low agreeableness is where you get the best pushback.
• Neuroticism — How risk-averse are they? High neuroticism means they worry about what could go wrong.

Pro tip: For the most useful feedback, create personas with low agreeableness and high neuroticism. These are the personas that will challenge your assumptions instead of telling you what you want to hear.

Add a name, demographic details, and cognitive biases. Biases like "Price Sensitive," "Skeptical," or "Brand Loyal" shape how the persona evaluates your product.

Step 2: Set a scenario (30 seconds)

Before you start chatting, set the context. Synthicant includes six built-in scenarios:

1. Product evaluation — The persona is considering your product for the first time
2. Pricing review — They're looking at your pricing page and deciding if it's worth it
3. Competitor comparison — They're comparing you against a specific competitor
4. Feature request — They're a current user who wants something you don't offer
5. Churn risk — They're thinking about canceling
6. Onboarding — They just signed up and are trying to get value quickly

You can also write a custom scenario. Something like: "You're a 35-year-old marketing manager who just saw our ad on LinkedIn and clicked through to our landing page."

Step 3: Interview (5-7 minutes per persona)

Now chat. Ask open-ended questions:

• "What's your first impression of this product?"
• "What would make you choose this over [competitor]?"
• "What concerns do you have about the pricing?"
• "Walk me through how you'd use this in your daily workflow"
• "What would make you recommend this to a colleague?"

The persona responds in character. If you set them as skeptical with high neuroticism, they'll push back. They'll raise objections. They'll ask about security, pricing, and what happens if things go wrong.

This is the good stuff. The objections a synthetic persona raises are often the same objections your real users have but are too polite to mention.

Step 4: Upload data for deeper interviews

For even more realistic responses, upload real customer data before interviewing. Synthicant supports:

• Text files (.txt, .csv) — Customer surveys, feedback forms
• Documents (.pdf, .docx) — Interview transcripts, research reports
• Images (.png, .jpg) — Screenshots, wireframes, mockups
• Audio (.mp3, .wav) — Recorded interviews, voicemails
• Video (.mp4, .mov) — User testing sessions, product demos

All text is run through PII redaction before embedding. The persona then references this data when answering, with expandable citations so you can verify the source.

Step 5: Repeat with different personas

Here's where the speed advantage compounds. Reset the session (each one starts fresh by design) and interview a completely different persona type:

• The skeptical enterprise buyer
• The budget-conscious small business owner
• The tech-savvy early adopter
• The risk-averse late majority

Same questions, radically different responses. In 30 minutes, you can cover more ground than a month of traditional research.

What to do with the results

Synthetic interviews don't produce statistically significant data. They produce hypotheses worth testing. Use them to:

• Identify objections before they become churn reasons
• Test messaging before spending ad budget
• Prioritize features based on persona reactions
• Prepare for real user interviews with better questions

The goal isn't to replace real research. It's to make sure you're asking the right questions when you do.

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Ready to try it? Create your first persona and run a synthetic interview in under 10 minutes.