My Old Boss Called Me a Jack Russell Terrier
When I get an idea, I cannot let it go. My former manager, Julie Shriver at Wells Fargo, once described me as a Jack Russell Terrier.
I spent the spring and early summer laser-focused on one question. Can research judgment actually be encoded, or is it the one thing that stays human?
So I built an AI research partner to find out. And asked 31 practitioners on five continents to try to break it.
They kept telling me their PMs and designers should have it too. Not to replace themselves. They said it would help them stop fielding requests that arrive half-baked. One described teams where democratization stalls because the first hump, plan quality, is too high. They were not asking for a faster tool. They were asking for better thinking to land on their desk.
The judgment stays yours. The translation is the part you can learn.
That distinction is why BUILD Like A Pro exists.
Researchers are context architects. We just don't call ourselves that.
Every research plan is a spec for what a study should accomplish.
Every discussion guide is a controlled vocabulary.
Every synthesis is an exercise in structure and hierarchy.
Every stakeholder alignment conversation is mental-model articulation.
Describing intent, structuring context, articulating what good looks like. You have been doing this your whole career. You just called it research.
Have you translated it into something visual yet? Why not?
One afternoon, from the July cohort.
One BUILD participant, a mixed-methods researcher, came to the workshop after interviewing that morning at a company with a serious research ops function. She told us she almost skipped the session because she assumed she'd be stuck in code.
During build time, she created a working research repository. Searchable past studies, three layout options to choose from, real interactions. By the end, she was refining the visual design and planning to adapt it for that company and send it along with her interview follow-up.
Nobody gave her permission to do that. She had something to send with her thank you note.
Recommendations aren't enough anymore. Making is. Showing is. Shipping is.
BUILD does not teach coding. It does not teach design. It teaches the translation. You bring the skill you already have: describing a problem, defining an audience, articulating what success looks like. In three hours you produce a working visual artifact. Real enough to test. Real enough to share. Real enough to add to your case studies, or build on from there.
Looking for a new role right now? Getting asked about your AI competency in interviews?
Show them. Don't tell them.
Next BUILD cohorts:
Saturday, August 29 · 9am-12pm PT
Tuesday, September 1 · 3pm-6pm PT
$197 · Live online · 3 hours · Max 8 students · No prerequisites
One seat per session is reserved at 50% off for anyone between roles. Inquire for more information: michele@curiositytank.com.
Have a team? Private sessions run for groups of four or more, with each person's project scoped in advance. Bring BUILD to your team.
P.S. Two days before Saturday's BUILD session, I am telling the whole story live with the team at Condens. What 31 practitioners found when they tried to break my AI research partner, a panel deliberately weighted toward senior researchers and people working outside my own expertise. What it taught me about where research actually succeeds or fails. Not downstream, where every tool is racing to be faster. Upstream, in the thinking before any data is collected.
Condens: Thursday, August 27, 9am PT / 12pm ET / 6pm CEST. Free and recorded. Register here.
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