Automating Usability Testing Reports with AI: From Sessions to Insights in Minutes
- Philip Burgess
- Aug 21
- 3 min read
By Philip Burgess - UX Research Leader
Usability testing is the cornerstone of great UX—rich with user feedback, interaction pain points, and design validation. But once the sessions are over, one thing looms large: the dreaded usability report.
For many UX researchers, analyzing sessions, pulling quotes, tagging issues, and building a report can take hours—sometimes days. But what if AI could automate that process without sacrificing depth?
Here’s how we used AI to automate usability reporting, slash our analysis time by 70%, and deliver impactful, stakeholder-ready insights faster than ever before.
The Old Way: Manual, Tedious, and Time-Consuming
Let’s be real: writing usability reports is not the fun part.
You record the sessions, rewatch the videos, tag quotes, document issues, highlight patterns, rank severity, and build visuals. It’s a cognitively demanding, repetitive task that eats up precious time—especially when stakeholders want insights yesterday.
Even with tools like Notion or Google Docs, the process is still mostly manual.
Enter AI: From Transcripts to Themes in Minutes
Here’s how we integrated AI into our usability reporting workflow:
Step 1: Record & Transcribe with AI
We used tools like:
Zoom + Otter.ai or Lookback for video recording and instant transcription
Descript or tl;dv for auto-tagging moments and summarizing sessions
Step 2: Prompt-Based Analysis
We exported the transcripts and used ChatGPT or Claude with prompts like:
“Summarize this usability session. Identify the top 3 usability issues, describe user expectations vs. experience, and include one direct quote per issue.”
Or:
“List UX issues in this session using Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics. Rank severity as low, medium, or high.”
In seconds, we had a structured summary for each session.
Step 3: Theme Clustering
After analyzing multiple sessions, we dropped all AI-generated summaries into a single prompt:
“From these session summaries, cluster usability issues into common themes. Identify the top 5 UX problems and suggest actionable recommendations.”
This created a topline summary, complete with trends, frequencies, and impact areas.
Step 4: Report Generation
With these themes in hand, we prompted ChatGPT to generate:
An executive summary slide
A prioritized issues list
Annotated quotes from users
Design recommendations per issue
Then we polished the language, added visuals (screenshots, heatmaps), and delivered a professional-looking deck or doc—in 1/3 the usual time.
Before vs. After AI
Task | Manual Reporting | AI-Enhanced Workflow |
Transcription | 6–8 hours | Instant with Otter.ai or Descript |
Issue Tagging & Quotes | 4–6 hours | 1–2 hours with LLM support |
Report Writing | 8–12 hours | 2–3 hours (plus polish) |
Total Time | ~20+ hours | ~6–8 hours |
Best Practices for AI Usability Reports
Use structured prompts. Be specific about what you want: themes, quotes, heuristics, priorities.
Always verify. AI can hallucinate or misinterpret nuance. Cross-check with raw footage or notes.
Blend machine and human. Let AI handle the first pass, but use your UX judgment to refine insights.
Document your prompt templates. Standardizing prompts improves consistency across reports.
The Real Value: Speed + Strategic Influence
The faster you get reports out, the sooner your team can act on them. By automating usability reporting, we turned weeks of work into days—and moved from being bottlenecks to strategic partners in product delivery.
Instead of spending hours cutting quotes, we spent time in collaboration, influence, and iteration.
Final Thought
AI won’t replace your UX brain—but it can become your analysis assistant, helping you scale, accelerate, and amplify the impact of usability research.
Done right, automated reports don’t just save time. They unlock your ability to deliver more research, more often, with more influence.
Over to You: Have you tried using AI in your usability testing workflow? What tools or prompts worked best for you?
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