Core concepts

theconsumer.ai is built from a handful of building blocks. This page explains what each one is, where you find it and how they connect. The names match the labels in the app.

How it all fits together

You start with a question to Iris. That turns into a survey design. Together with a panel, it becomes a survey run inside a study. Every survey run produces its own report.

Thread (your conversation with Iris)
  └─ Survey design + panel
       └─ Study
            ├─ Run 1 → Report
            └─ Run 2 → Report

Around this sit materials (your files), KPIs (questions that appear as a single value in the report) and ad-hoc questions (a quick question to a panel without a study).

The building blocks at a glance

Thread

A thread is a conversation with Iris. You start one by sending a message from the home page. In the thread, Iris asks follow-up questions, shows cards for you to choose and confirm, and opens the Dock with your study when there is one. Threads are private: your colleagues can't see them, but they can see the designs, panels and studies that come out of them. More in Threads.

Survey design

A survey design records what you want to ask: the research question, the individual questions and their types, the stimuli and the KPIs. The app usually just calls it a Design. A design belongs to the team and can be reused for further survey runs. When you launch a survey run, the design is frozen for that run. Later edits only apply to the next run. How to edit a design is covered in Survey design. Ready-made designs are in Templates.

Panel

A panel is the audience that answers your questions. There are two kinds:

• Dynamic Personas: AI respondents generated from population statistics. Results show tendencies.
• Premium Twins: replicas of real people who were interviewed in depth beforehand.

Standard panels are provided by theconsumer.ai. Team panels are ones your team created. Every panel has versions with a fixed member list, and every report names the version that was surveyed. More in Audience.

Study and survey run

A study holds everything that belongs to one research project. It consists of one or more survey runs. A survey run is one concrete execution: a specific design, a specific panel, one launch, its own answers and its own report. This lets you, for example, test two pack designs one after the other in the same study, or repeat a run with a changed design.

Every survey run follows the same process: first Preparation with Design and Panel, then Execution with Survey, Analysis and Report. You follow it in the study's Overview, either in the Dock next to the chat or on the study page. A study that has never been launched is visible only to you. From the first launch on, your team sees it. More in Run a study.

Report

Once the analysis of a survey run is done, its report is created automatically. The status changes to Report ready and you get a notification. A report opens with the report basis (which panel, which version, how many respondents) and contains the summary, the KPIs, recommendations and the results for each question with their evidence. More in Read a report.

Ad-hoc question

Sometimes you just want a quick answer. An ad-hoc question asks a whole panel one open question, straight from the thread. You get the answers grouped into themes, but no report. Afterwards you can keep talking to individual respondents for free (recontact). Ad-hoc questions from your threads are private. Questions asked by an integration belong to the team once confirmed. More in Ad-hoc questions & recontact.

Materials and stimuli

Every file you upload becomes a material. If you upload it in the chat, it starts out personal, visible only to you. Save for the Team makes it visible to the team, and this can't be undone. A material becomes a stimulus when a design shows it to respondents, either for all questions or for single ones. Stimuli must be visible to the team. More in Files & materials and Stimuli & materials.

KPIs

A KPI is a scale or choice question you mark with a star in the design. In the report it gets its own card with one value, such as the top-2-box share. KPIs can be based on a KPI template. Standard templates come from theconsumer.ai, Team templates are created by your team. Same question and same scale keep values comparable across studies. More in KPIs.

Credits

Survey runs and ad-hoc questions cost credits. The price is participants × questions ÷ 15, ten times that with Premium Twins: 100 Dynamic Personas with 15 questions cost 100 credits. You always see it before you confirm. If a survey run fails, your team gets the credits back. Creating a panel costs no credits while a free panel slot is left. Credits come from your team's plan (On Demand, Start, Grow or Enterprise) and from packages. More in Credits, usage & limits and Pricing and credits.

Team and personal

You always work inside a team. Anything that serves the research is visible to the whole team. Anything that is part of your own way of working stays with you.

What owners and members can each do is covered in Members & roles.