The Understanders is user researcher Matt Gallivan exploring how people use and feel about AI and other new technologies.

There are three types of posts on The Understanders:

  • 📝 Research summary: a simple breakdown of academic or other publicly-available research 🆓/🔒 (sometimes free, sometimes paid)

  • 🔥 Commentary: a take on a recent news story or piece of research 🆓 (free)

  • 🧠 The Understanders research: original primary research done by The Understanders, often in partnership with a third party 🔒 (for paid subscribers only)

All free posts are added to the archive after 3 weeks. Paid subscribers get full access to the archive.

Read more about plans for The Understanders in the inaugural post.

Disclosure: original primary research studies conducted by The Understanders are often enabled by research platform companies that offer their tools to us free of charge for the purposes of the study. In exchange, we share that they offered that support in the findings write-ups and link to their websites. These companies do not ask for any influence over the findings or the write-ups, both of which are produced independently.

The Understanders is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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User researcher Matt Gallivan explores how people use and feel about AI and other new technologies

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User researcher writing about how people use and feel about technology. Former head of user research at Slack, founding member of research teams at Airbnb and Meta, and the first digital audience researcher at NPR.