Our Two-Cents on this Year’s IIEX Conference

A couple of us from C+R Research were recently able to attend the IIEX Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Thought-leaders and thought-incorporators – including technology, research and brand-side gurus – came together to exchange ideas. While so many innovations and much content was shared, there were two topics that particularly inspired us.

System 1 is All the Rage Tried and True

At the conference, there was a lot of talk about leveraging System 1 for the most insightful learnings, which is the human brain’s immediate and intuitive response (versus System 2 which is the brain’s slower and analytical response.)

Agreed.

We cannot help but concur at C+R, where we’ve been doing System 1 research and harnessing its responses for decades. While there is a time and a place for System 2, many of our methods – from conversational interviews to assessing surveys – incorporate fast reactions that keep respondents out of over-thinking their reply. Industry buzz is important – it keeps us thinking outside the box and improving approaches or offerings – but sometimes it’s necessary to take a step back to think about how that buzz fits together with past and current initiatives. In this case, we still believe that having respondents engage with System 1 thinking can garner clients’ top insights.

AI + HK 4EVR

Another item of immense interest at the conference was A.I. or Artificial Intelligence. The goal of using this technology is to enhance, deepen insights and to build efficiency. However, A.I. has yet to be seamlessly incorporated into the market research industry. We say this without judgment of course, because effort and trials are what is needed to ultimately reach the end goal, i.e., a well-functioning method of incorporating A.I. for insights and learning.

We think, perhaps, the most important element of A.I. is the H.K. – or human knowledge – that goes into it and is needed to make sure systems jive with reality. Natural language analysis and the human understanding is the important foundation to creating functioning A.I. And, even upon its creation, the ongoing confirmation of its relevancy is needed, to ensure the intelligence reflects our changing, non-static mindsets and realities.

Ultimately, the human lens is an ever-necessary component – human insights are best gleamed by humans, who can best interpret them.