AI Personas - Virtual User Lab

Understanding how customers think, make decisions, and behave is the key to innovation, marketing, and strategy. Traditional research methods such as interviews, surveys, or focus groups are often time-consuming, costly, and difficult to scale. At Fraunhofer IAO, we’re rethinking this process by developing AI-powered customer agents that simulate both individual consumers and customer segments.

Our Vision

As a team working at the intersection of AI and interaction design, we aim to transform customer research into a scalable, adaptive, and interactive experience. Our goal is to equip innovation, UX, and marketing teams with intelligent agents that simulate real users and enable faster, data-driven decisions.

Project example

Virutal User Lab VUL  simulates customer segments using structured and unstructured data, such as surveys and CRM systems. VUL was developed to support marketing, product planning, UX testing, and A/B evaluations. It enables trend analysis and helps explore behavioral differences among demographic groups..

Our Approach

Behavior-oriented modeling: Based on psychological frameworks and real-world decision-making factors:

• Behavior-oriented modeling: Based on psychological frameworks and real-world decision-making factors
• Customer Twin & Segment Simulation: Use of structured, unstructured, and qualitative business data (e.g., CRM, interviews, surveys)
• Configurable Interfaces: Tools and templates tailored to specific industries and use cases
• Scenario Testing: Agents participate in A/B tests, focus groups, and campaign simulations
• Memory and Contextual Adaptation: Agents continue to evolve to reflect changes in user behavior over time

Who benefits from the solution?

• Innovation and product teams—testing ideas and exploring new use cases
• Marketing and strategy experts—evaluating campaigns and simulating reactions
• UX & design professionals—iterating on product and service concepts based on realistic behavior
• Sales teams—understanding customer objections, preferences, and motivations
• Executives and decision-makers—using digital twins for planning and investment

Your Benefits

• Scalable and cost-effective user research
• Improved customer segmentation and targeting
• Faster iteration with fewer resources in the real world
• Deep insights into human values, motivations, and decision-making processes