Conference Agenda

In a world driven by data, how do we keep empathy alive? This session explores bold, human-centred approaches that push qualitative research beyond its traditional boundaries. We’ll dive into:

• Direct, unfiltered conversations between marketers and consumers to foster authentic empathy and multicultural understanding.
• Meta facilitation and AI-powered storytelling, capturing image and audio narratives at scale to build a living library of real consumer voices.
• In-the-moment qual at the shelf, uncovering the tension between intention and behaviour where decisions truly happen.
• Elevating qual´s role in shaping business decisions that resonate with real people

• Capturing contextual in-the-moment consumer realities with AI-led interviews
• Bridging the say-do gap and capturing non-verbal cues and emotions with AI-video analysis
• Spotlighting different use-cases to showcase business impact generated

• Decoding Brand DNA: Uncovering core values, differentiators, and competitive strengths.
• Mapping Shopper Realities: Analyzing purchase behaviors, key occasions, and decision drivers.
• Identifying Growth Levers: Spotlighting opportunities, barriers, and brand assets for acceleration.
• Activating with Clarity: Delivering actionable guidelines for optimized offers and impactful communication.

• What AI gets wrong (and right): real-world testing results that show where AI accelerates insight, and where human oversight is critical to avoid risk and misinterpretation
• Why trust is a human job: how empathy, ethics, and contextual judgment safeguard credibility and decision confidence in AI-powered research
• From data to decisions: the specific ways human interpretation turns AI outputs into coherent stories leaders can actually act on
• How to operationalize the balance: practical frameworks for blending AI scale with human judgment across insight generation, validation, and storytelling

• Applying AI to strengthen live, in-person qualitative work without replacing human connection
• Designing more adaptive conversations grounded in a deeper understanding of context
• Preserving nuance, emotion, and authentic respondent voice in synthesis and delivery
• Building qualitative learning that compounds over time rather than resetting with each project

In this hands-on workshop, resident futurist Anthony D. Paul, of Amtrak's applied innovation and technologies practice, will expand upon last year's Qual360 presentation and teach you how to combine futuring tools with your learned insights to drive organizational change. This session will bridge your existing operating environment research (inertia pushes) and strategic decision-making (intentional pulls) to invest in desirable futures.

• Thinking about futures in a practical/agile way
• Reducing ¨doomsday¨ noise in organizational change drivers
• Convert qualitative learnings into actionable decision-maker tools
• Gaining participation and buy-in in futuring

• Designing a multi-year foresight study based on the “Natural Foresight Framework”
• Using hands-on exercises to apply foresight tools to real institutional challenges, creating narratives of possible futures and testing provocative scenarios
• Navigating misinformation and enhancing information literacy while keeping human interaction at the center
• Building legitimacy and influence by engaging stakeholders directly, turning futures thinking into a shared practice rather than a top-down strategy

• Beyond Words: How Video Intelligence Is Expanding the Qualitative Lens
• Decoding Real Consumer Behavior: What Social Video Reveals That Surveys Can’t
• From Microtrends to Meaning: Using Video Intelligence to Spot What’s Next
• Why They Believe: Using Video Intelligence to Craft Stronger Claims & Concepts

• Navigating reorgs without losing strategic impact, maintaining continuity and keeping insight anchored to business priorities
• Doing more with less: building a high-leverage insight function
• Democratising insight safely and effectively across the organisation
• Partnering differently: enabling decision makers, not just delivering research
• Sustaining credibility and influence in uncertain times

• Evaluating the credibility of AI-driven inputs, from synthetic respondents to AI-generated consumer content
• Assessing the impact of ChatGPT in qualitative open-ends, balancing clarity versus authenticity
• Testing AI-assisted techniques such as automated probing and theme detection to see where they enhance—or miss—human nuance
• Reframing the qualitative researcher’s role in an AI-enabled landscape by pairing technological capability with critical judgment

• Recognizing how AI accelerates marketing efficiency but also drives brand sameness without human direction
• Protecting the distinctiveness that comes from human insight, emotion, and authenticity
• Activating the 3 Cs—Community, Culture, Closeness—to add depth and meaning AI alone can’t deliver
• Leveraging qualitative research as the engine that keeps brand strategy human-led and culturally connected

• Reframing traditional product development and research approaches to prioritize adaptability over linearity
• Applying qualitative insights to reshape product relevance, connecting existing products with evolving user needs
• Evaluating the benefits and limitations of retrofitting research to current tech capabilities
• Leveraging tips and lessons from Adobe’s case study to enhance your own strategy

• Meet the R+D Accelerator, a large company's answer to start-up success
• Understand capabilities that make a difference
• Develop internal partnerships that bring the consumer to life while delivering speed
• Leverage these partnerships to influence business decisions

• Debating what should (and shouldn’t) be automated – which aspects of qualitative research benefit from AI augmentation and where is human touch irreplaceable?
• Defending depth in a world obsessed with speed without getting left behind
• Shifting the value of research from investigation to interpretation, with AI handling data collection and surface analysis
• Moving from resistance to leadership and taking a proactive role in guiding responsible AI use

• Explore how beauty is truly experienced in modern America through a hybrid study combining 1,200 nationally representative interviews with 50 in-depth conversations powered by BoltChatAI
• Learn why 71% of Americans say they are satisfied with their beauty yet only 21% would change nothing...revealing the tension between confidence and constant self-improvement
• Discover 14 actionable insights designed to help beauty and brand leaders respond with realism, relevance and long-term growth in a culture defined by contradiction

• Recruiting creatively to access hard-to-reach and anonymous participants when traditional pipelines fall short
• Building trust in stigmatized and privacy-sensitive communities
• Fostering safety through open, non-judgmental research environments
• Translating sensitively to turn delicate findings into bold product decisions – all while respecting privacy

• Identifying the critical moments of fragrance use that controlled research environments often miss
• Revealing insights rooted in real routines, lived spaces, and natural consumer behaviours through in-home engagement
• Expanding representation by connecting with consumers typically underrepresented in traditional research
• Applying clear guidance on when and how to integrate in-home methods into your qualitative research toolkit

Qual is the engine of inclusive AI—turning lived experience into actionable criteria for inclusivity, ethics, and authenticity. In this hands-on session, you’ll practice translating qualitative insights into guardrails like revocable consent, redress flows, bias checks, and restoration metrics. You’ll leave with an applied playbook and an upskilling plan to embed inclusive, authenticity-driven practices across any team that builds, uses or ships AI.

• Translating experience into action: turn lived insights into shippable standards for inclusivity, ethics, and authenticity so teams can act with confidence
• Building guardrails from stories: convert findings into operational safeguards—revocable consent, redress flows, bias checks, and restoration metrics
• Designing for global resilience: use a simple resilience canvas to adapt work and products to diverse languages, bandwidths, and norms without losing rigor or authenticity
• Applying and embedding: working through real-world cases to create a two-week upskilling plan that embeds inclusive, responsible, and authenticity-driven practices across AI teams

• Examine how AI disrupted and rebuilt the content industry — and uncover the parallels with the growing commoditization of research
• Understand where the research industry sits in this cycle of acceleration, quality decline, and renewal — and recognise what leading teams are doing differently
• Explore the biggest unresolved challenges in AI-enabled research, identify who’s currently setting the pace, and anticipate what’s likely to emerge in the next few years

• Consumers are curious about agentic AI but awareness and understanding are still low.​
• Younger, higher-income Gen Z and millennials are emerging as key early adopters.​
• People see strong benefits in efficiency and learning but also have major concerns about oversight, privacy, and job loss.​
• Trust-building features like human review, clear opt-ins, transparency, and “panic button” controls are critical for adoption.

• Blending Humanity and Technology: why tomorrow´s qual researcher must integrate deep human insights with fluency in digital tools and platforms
• Data Empathy: building the ability to interpret and connect diverse data formats (text, video, behavioural) while maintaining emotional intelligence and cultural sensitivity
• Human-Centered Storytelling in a Digital Age: transforming AI-driven outputs (dashboards, summaries, visualizations) into narratives that resonate
• Future-Proofing Through Lifelong Learning: embracing continuous growth in technology, ethics, and collaboration to stay ahead in an evolving insights ecosystem