Michelle Bejian Lotia is a staff experience researcher at Ramp, where she’s been building AI-powered research tools to manage research intake, orchestration, and coaching. Over more than twenty years, Michelle has built and led research teams at Asana, Zapier, and Trainline, establishing voice-of-customer programmes and insights infrastructure. Throughout her career, she’s been driven by one question: How do you bring customers closer to the people building products—and make it scalable? Michelle holds a master’s degree in information from the University of Michigan. How to AU UXR is brought to you by Strella, a customer research platform that uses AI to run in-depth interviews and generate actionable insights in just a few hours. In This Conversation In this conversation, hosted by Kate Towsey, Michelle shares how deadline pressure, combined with the possibilities of AI, led to one of the most compelling examples I’ve seen of AI being used not just to speed up research but also to uplift the craft. Michelle built a transcript-based coaching system that evaluates research calls, provides “tough but fair” feedback, and helps ninety non-researchers improve their craft within minutes of a research session. In this episode, Michelle will walk you through the tool, so make sure to watch closely. This series builds on the insights shared in the How to AI UXR map, a five-page map that charts key trends, helps you pinpoint your AI maturity level, and offers practical, real-world applications you can adapt to your research systems. → Download the map. In this episode, we cover: * How Michelle built the UXR Interview Coach in a matter of hours * How the system scores research interviews against a custom-built rubric and delivers private, actionable feedback in Slack * Why “tough but fair” feedback lands differently when it is timely, specific, and evidence-based * What the team learned by analysing research quality across roles, call types, and quarters * How the rubric evolved as the system encountered more nuanced customer conversations * Why AI’s real value for research may be in enabling new systems, not simply automating old workflows or augmenting analysis * Michelle’s advice for researchers experimenting with AI: start with one painful or underperforming area and make it better one step at a time Partway through the episode, Priya Krishnan, the cofounder and COO of Strella, shares her take on the conversation as a leader building one of the tools that these researchers are exploring and using. Connect with the Guests * Michelle Bejian Lotia, Staff UX Researcher at Ramp * Kate Towsey, founder of The ResearchOps Review * Priya Krishnan, cofounder and COO of Strella How to AU UXR is supported by Strella, a customer research platform that uses AI to run in-depth interviews and generate actionable insights in just a few hours. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theresearchopsreview.com
