Simulated Interview
A Simulated Interview is an interview generated by the platform using your interview template, which is a structured set of AI-generated questions. These questions are based on your Canvas, customer segments, and hypotheses.
Instead of involving a real participant, the Innovation Within Assistant uses the interview template to simulate realistic responses that reflect how a representative customer might think and respond within that context.
At its core, simulated interviews are a learning tool — designed to help you understand how to run effective customer discovery conversations before, during, and alongside real interviews.
Why Use Simulated Interviews?
Simulated interviews are designed to help you learn and practice customer discovery when real interviews are not yet possible or when you want to explore ideas more quickly.
They are especially useful when you want to:
- Learn how to ask clear, non-leading discovery questions
- Explore early hypotheses before talking to real customers
- See how your interview questions might perform in a real conversation
- Identify gaps, assumptions, or unclear hypotheses
- Generate example insights for a new Canvas or customer segment
- Build momentum while scheduling real interviews
This allows teams to continue learning and refining their discovery approach without waiting for live customer calls.
How Simulated Interviews Work
When you run a simulated interview:
- The AI interviewer follows your interview template and asks structured, discovery-focused questions
- The AI interviewee responds as a realistic representative of the selected customer segment
- Responses are grounded in your Canvas context, not generic answers
The conversation is automatically saved as an interview and includes:
- A full transcript
- Meta analysis (executive summary, explicit and implicit insights)
- Insights linked directly to your Canvas hypotheses
How Simulated Interviews Are Different from Real Interviews
Simulated interviews are not a replacement for real customer conversations. Instead, they act as a complementary learning tool.
- Real interviews capture real-world behavior, emotion, and lived experience
- Simulated interviews help you learn discovery structure, test assumptions, and refine your questioning approach
Many teams use simulated interviews first, then apply what they learn when conducting live customer interviews.
When to Use Simulated Interviews
Simulated interviews work best when you are:
- Early in the discovery process
- Learning how to conduct effective customer discovery interviews
- Testing new or uncertain hypotheses
- Exploring multiple customer segments quickly
- Preparing for real interviews
- Teaching or learning customer discovery methods