Plan | Synthetic persona interviews are available on the Free plan and above.
A synthetic persona is a virtual person built by learning the characteristics and data of a specific segment from real response data.
👉 What is a synthetic persona interview?
Select personas to interview > Select an interview method > Conduct the interview > Organize the interview results |
Go to the [Synthetic persona interview] tab in the left menu bar of the Dataspace Home screen.
1. Select personas to interview
Choose either [Import] or [Create new] to decide which personas to interview.
Tip | 'Recommended synthetic personas' are personas that Opensurvey has built in advance from trend data. You can start interviewing consumers related to your industry right away.
1) Import
Choose 'Import' when you want to interview personas that have already been created. To interview personas you created, choose to import from [Library]. If you don't have any personas of your own or want to explore other personas, choose to import from [Marketplace]. Personas in the Marketplace are built in advance from real data held by Opensurvey.
2) Create new
Choose 'Create new' when you haven't created any personas yet or want to explore new personas.
Individual vs. group persona conversations
Category | By persona | By group |
Conversation partner | One persona | Multiple personas |
When to use | When you want to understand one perspective in depth | When you want to see how reactions differ within the same target |
Tip | You can add up to 25 personas at a time.
step 1. Enter a persona description
Describe the persona you want to talk with. Rather than listing only demographic information such as gender or age group, describe what behavior or decision criteria the consumer has, for example, "office workers in their 30s and 40s considering buying a domestic electric vehicle." The more specific your description, the more accurate the persona.
step 2. Select a creation type
Select a creation type.
1 representative: Creates one persona that represents the segment. Use this when you want to understand one perspective in depth, such as the journey from interest in electric vehicles to exploration and purchase.
Persona group: Creates multiple personas with different characteristics within the same segment. Use this when you want to see where and how reactions split within the same target, such as "brand-focused considerers" vs. "performance-focused considerers" among people considering buying an electric vehicle.
Tip | If you save personas to the Library, you can load them with a single click in your next interview without creating them again.
step 3. Select source data
Select the source data that synthetic persona responses will be based on. Synthetic personas answer based on real data, so you need to decide on that data first.
Search for suitable data: Dataspace AI finds and suggests data that matches your persona description from trend data and your Space data. We recommend this when you're not sure which data to use.
Select data: You choose the source data yourself from your Space data, trend data, and reports. We recommend this when you already know which data you want to use.
Tip | Once personas are created, take a look at their profiles. You can see a short self-introduction, a detailed profile, their thoughts on the research topic, and the data each consumer was built from.
Note | For statistical reliability, groups with fewer than 30 of all respondents are not extracted as separate segments.
2. Select an interview method
Once you select personas, three interview methods appear.
1) Proceed with AI recommendations
Enter a brief interview purpose, and AI builds a suitable question list for you. Use this when you know what you want to find out from your target customers but aren't sure how to structure specific questions.
Enter purpose: Write what you want to learn from this interview, for example, "I want to know why people don't prefer domestic electric vehicles."
Attach reference images: If you have design drafts or package images to show in the interview, upload them as well.
2) Send a question list
'Send a question list' lets you write interview questions in advance, send them to the personas, and receive all the answers at once. Use this when you want to run persona interviews quickly and efficiently.
Manual input: If you already have a list of questions, choose the manual input option. You can quickly collect answers to the questions you want.
Generate questions with AI: If you know what you want to learn from your target customers but aren't sure how to structure the questions, try Dataspace AI, which reflects the know-how of qualitative research experts. It automatically generates questions that match your intent.
How to generate questions with AI
① Enter purpose: Describe the purpose of the interview, for example, "I want to know why people don't prefer domestic electric vehicles."
② Set objectives: Five objectives are automatically extracted based on how your interview purpose is interpreted. You can edit them or add more.
③ Generate and review: AI generates a question list along with its design intent. Review whether the questions reflect the objectives you set, and edit or add questions as needed.
3) Ask in real time
'Ask in real time' lets you continue asking questions as you read the personas' answers, without setting questions in advance. Use this when you want to watch answers in real time and ask follow-up questions that dig deeper into what you're curious about.
3. Conduct the interview
Click [Start interview] to begin the interview.
If you started with a question list, the questions you wrote appear on the left and the personas' answers appear on the right. If you started with Ask in real time, first enter your question in the chat.
Dataspace's synthetic personas answer based on data. Click [Response basis] to see the basis for a synthetic persona's answer in detail. You can check the ratio of facts to inferences, the key facts confirmed in the raw data, and the data sources referenced. You can also open the original data directly through the link next to each source.
For group interviews
① Common findings / Distinctive differences: Common findings are experiences or thoughts that appeared across multiple personas' answers. Distinctive differences are opinions or differences that split according to the personas' characteristics.
② Group view / View response: Group interview answers are grouped by similar content in [Group view] by default. Switch to [View response] to check each persona's original answer one by one.
③ Chat: If you want to hear more from a specific persona, hover over its card in [Group view] and click [Chat]. A 1:1 individual interview with that persona begins.
4. Organize the interview results
You can organize the interview results with [Generate report] and [Download answers] below the question list on the left.
1) To summarize the interview in a report
Click [Generate report] to open a chat with Dataspace AI. Tell it what you'll use the report for, and it writes the report to fit that purpose. Synthetic personas are built from data, so the report includes both the figures confirmed in that data and the answers from the interview.
2) To analyze the interview answers yourself
To analyze the interview answers yourself, click [Download answers] to download all interview answers as an Excel or CSV file. The file contains the "original responses" the personas actually gave.
Teammates who view your interview can ask the same personas follow-up questions right away!
They don't need to create a new interview. They can simply continue asking questions from the previous conversation.