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, an AI-powered customer research platform that partners with you to build, moderate, and synthesise interviews, allowing you to go from question to actionable insights in just a few hours.
In This Conversation
In this conversation, 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 your screen is on.
A Five-Page How to AI UXR Map
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.
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, as a leader building one of the tools these researchers are exploring and using, Priya Krishnan, the cofounder and COO of Strella, shares her take on the conversation.
Connect with the Guests
Michelle Bejian Lotia, Staff UX Researcher at Ramp
Priya Krishnan, cofounder and COO of Strella
How to AU UXR is brought to you by Strella, an AI-powered customer research platform that partners with you to build, moderate, and synthesise interviews, allowing you to go from question to actionable insights in just a few hours.
