The tail is the point

The tail is the point.

Nielsen Norman Group gave 120 AI-generated respondents the same open question it had asked 604 UX professionals: what should our work be called?

Both groups landed on "UX" as the dominant term. But the synthetic answers collapsed onto about a dozen labels — while the humans used more than 50.

Synthetic users are very good at the average answer. The problem: nobody I serve is the average user.

In accessibility work, the long tail isn't noise. It's the screen reader user, the keyboard-only user, the person at 400% zoom. If a research method smooths away the variation, it smooths away exactly the people the work exists for.

Use synthetic users for speed if you must. But validate with actual users. The tail is where the truth lives.

Study: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/synthetic-users-vs-human-respondents/

#UX #Accessibility #UserResearch #A11y