How to Start an Interview?

This walks through the actual clicks for running your first AI Interview — from creating the project to reading the report. Five steps, about 10 minutes of your time.

The 5 steps

1. Create the project. On the homepage, click "Create New Interview." Give it a descriptive name (e.g., "Sparkling coffee Q2 concept test" — not "Test 1"). Write a one- or two-sentence research objective. Pick Interview Chat (one-on-one) or Discussion Chat (group).

2. Pick your personas. Search the public library by keyword (age, occupation, behavior, city), browse system recommendations, or pick from your saved personas. A typical interview uses 5-8 personas; a discussion uses 3-8.

3. Set up the discussion guide. Write 3-5 open-ended questions you actually care about. The AI will follow up automatically — you don't need to script every turn. Open questions ("What would make you try this?") work better than yes/no ones.

4. Start the interview. Click "Start Interview" and close the tab. AI runs everything in the background and notifies you when it's done. A 5-person interview finishes in roughly 50-70 minutes.

5. Read the report. When you get the notification, open the project. You'll see per-persona summaries, key dialogue snippets, consensus/divergence across personas, and an actionable recommendations section.

Choosing Interview vs Discussion

Interview Chat — You ask, one persona answers. Best for exploring why people feel the way they do. Each persona's responses stay independent.
Discussion Chat — A moderator persona guides 3-8 personas to talk with each other. Best for spotting where people agree, where they collide, and which arguments actually shift opinions.

Pick Interview when the goal is depth on one persona's psychology. Pick Discussion when you want to see opinions bounce off each other.

How many personas do you need?

5 is the standard starting point. Most research questions reach "saturation" (no new themes emerging) around 6-7 personas. Go to 8-10 only when you're covering multiple distinct market segments; the cost difference is real and the marginal insight per persona drops.

What you can do mid-interview

Watch the interview progress live if you want to
Insert new questions for a specific persona mid-conversation
End a single persona's interview early if it goes nowhere
Pause and resume the whole project (it picks up where it left off)

For Discussion Chat, you can also inject new topics into the conversation while it's running.

After the report lands

The report includes per-persona findings, the strongest verbatim quotes, consensus and divergence across the group, and an actionable recommendations section. From there you can export (Markdown, PDF, Word), share with teammates, or ask follow-up questions to dig into specific findings.

A first-timer's most common mistake: writing a research objective that's too vague ("understand users"). Something concrete like "Understand whether 25-35 year-old working women would buy sparkling coffee at ¥18 for afternoon energy scenarios" gives the AI enough to work with.

How many personas to pick
How to set up Discussion Chat
What's in the interview report