Marvin

Pros: So many things. The core functionality is straightforward, clean, and focused. Capturing content, transcribing, coding, and sharing is all much cleaner than how our processes once were. The thoughtful implementation of AI is great and I trust the team to keep moving with intention on these implementations. In the end, Marvin is the platform that has helped me genuinely pursue a vision of research built with cumulative effect, clearly traceable chains of evidence, and highly transparent research documentation. It makes it easier to do all the things I learned in my training about the "right way" to do the work. Working with this platform I've gotten to know the team behind it as well (because they're also SUPER responsive) and I am excited to see where they'll bring this platform, because something tells me it will push my own thinking into new frontiers of what is possible.

Cons: If I had my preference, I would make Marvin our primary repository for knowledge management around product development. Marvin is home to everything research and insight, and I wouldn't honestly suggest they should veer out of that lane because they are great specialists in a field poised for revolution with specialist tools. But the major seam in our work is still persistently being able to track those chains of evidence from the presentation or roadmap built on top of the research all the way back to the original recordings, survey questions, and journal entries all stored in Marvin. To REALLY get it right we need to rethink some of our workflows and storytelling to live in this platform a little bit longer (because they have plenty of functionality to do that storytelling that we just aren't making the most use out of.)

Pros: It's the most complete tool that I've used and I'm always trying new ones. The AI capabilities are amazing and looks like every feature was made to save time from users, without disrespecting the research process at all.

Cons: It can be a huge challenge to approve the cost if the company is in a country which does not have Dollars ($) as the main currency. It can be very expensive.

Pros: Marvin is currently an essential tool in my daily routine as a user researcher. They meet all the basic needs of the researcher's role in a way no one else does, making the core of our work much easier and more efficient.

Cons: The possibility of creating insights into our research process. Once the company creates the culture of searching Marvin for information about the customer, this feature helps a lot to summarize the findings and spread the knowledge.

Pros: Ability to aggregate, review, share, tag, analyze qual conversations (and also control access and permissions) has totally accelerated my own workflows as well and made it easier to share what needed to be share with the team. Team is smart, responsive, and invested in satisfaction in success. It's not a major lift or headache to implement or learn -- which for a fast-paced, lean team like mine, was absolutely essential.

Cons: AI capabilities (as expected), namely transcription, aren't yet perfect but I'm sure they'll get there with time and as the tech evolves. We also wouldn't pay for a separate research repository tool in addition to this, but some capabilities native to those products aren't as much the focus with Marvin.

Pros: 1) Very powerful search and AI GPT-style "ask me anything" that allows me to make sense out of hundreds of hours of videos. 2) Very easy to organize and share video snippets. 3) Speech to text that works very well, in several languages. 5) Great team that is always striving to gather feedback and constantly improve the product.

Cons: The flows of moving between the main screen and projects are a bit confusing as they have a different side navigation, it took a bit getting used to. The recording bot sometimes takes a bit long to join Google Meet if invited manually.

Pros: Marvin allows us to quickly process and tag many hours of recorded research sessions. It equally allows to then cross link all those tags, for a speedier analysis. The team is very responsive to feature requests.

Cons: Marvin is fairly new software so some of the features are still being designed and added.

Pros: Really easy to organise your findings and label up your themes Really great user interface that feels familiar and is easy to grasp

Cons: The transcription can be a bit hit and miss, with punctuation sometimes missing etc. For cross market projects, the translation feature can sometimes be poor Although the AI tools can be useful, they still have quite a long way to go to be super helpful

Pros: My favourite thing about Marvin is how it brings research findings to life by enabling easy sharing of video clips from user interviews. Embedding a link into my slide decks that open when playing back findings has been a game changer for my work. The ability have a quick AI summary has also been fantastic in allowing me to get a sense of some of the key themes emerging from the data before I've started my own analysis.

Cons: The "insights" function is a little clumsy - my brain thinks of insights as project-specific, whereas in Marvin it seems to push all insights to a central section.

Pros: The Ai transcript for interview recording is revolutionary. Ai takes care of everything.

Cons: I feel the navigation within the Marvin tool could be better. I sometimes feel lost looking for a particular interview recording.