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Paul Sherman

People and AI, At Work and Home

Moderator Guide v4

Introduction

The pilot study focuses on understanding why and how people are adopting AI tools in their work and personal lives, and how AI use affects their activities, tasks, social interactions, skill development, and feelings. Through survey responses and in-depth interviews, the study will:

  • Probe people's AI tool exploration, adoption, and abandonment patterns
  • Elicit and explore people's successes and challenges using AI at work
  • Identify themes describing how AI is changing people's work and personal lives
  • Generate initial personas that describe patterns in people's AI adoption and use
  • Develop hypotheses for future research

Study Design and Logistics

Call for participation. Calls for participation are posted on LinkedIn and selected Slack groups. Prospective participants are directed to a Calendly page where they can select an interview date and time.

Survey. After selecting a time slot, participants are redirected to a survey where they are asked organizational and demographic questions. Respondents are also asked to describe how they and their organization are using AI tools.

Interview. Participants are interviewed for 30 minutes on a Google Meet video conference. The sessions are recorded and transcribed.

Moderator Guide

Total time: 30 minutes

Structure: Introduction + 11 core questions with follow-up chains + closing

Aim for ~2-3 minutes per core question. Not every question will be covered in every session. If a thread is running hot, stay with it. Questions marked with * are the most context-dependent and most likely to be skipped.

Introduction

"Thanks for talking with me today. I'm researching how people are using AI in their work and personal lives. This is a conversation, not a test. I'm interested in your actual experiences, not what you think you should say."

"I'm recording this so I can focus on our conversation rather than taking notes. I'll keep all recordings and transcripts de-identified. Any quotes or examples I use will be anonymized."

"Do you have any questions before we start? OK, let's begin."

Q1. Origin Story

~3 min

"I'd like you to tell me the story of your first 'oh wow' moment with AI. What was going on that made you try AI, and what happened that made the lightbulb turn on for you."

Follow-ups as needed:

  • "What were you hoping it would do for you?"
  • "What other AI tools have you adopted since then? Which ones stuck and which ones didn't? Why?"
  • If resistance or skepticism: "What was behind that? What changed?"
  • If organizational mandate: "How did that land with you and your colleagues?"

Q2. The Changed Workflow

~3 min

"Think about one thing you do regularly, at work or in your personal life, that AI has changed the most. Walk me through what you used to do versus what you do now."

Follow-ups as needed:

  • "What prompted you to bring AI into this?"
  • "What's better now? What's worse or harder?"
  • "What would it be like if you couldn't use AI for this anymore?"
  • If work context: "Has this changed how your work is evaluated, or what people expect from you?"
  • If they only talk about work: "How about in your personal life?"
  • If they only talk about personal: "How about at work?"

Q3. Organizational Adoption*

~2 min · Skip for participants with limited organizational visibility

"How is your organization handling AI adoption? Is it top-down, bottom-up, or somewhere in between?"

Follow-ups as needed:

  • "Is there an official policy, or are people figuring it out on their own?"
  • If top-down: "How are those decisions landing with the people actually doing the work?"
  • If bottom-up: "Are there tools or practices spreading informally? How does that happen?"
  • If unevenness: "What's driving the difference between the groups that have adopted and the ones that haven't?"

Q4. Successes and Challenges

~3 min

"What's been your biggest win with AI at work so far? And on the flip side, what's been the biggest disappointment or surprise failure?"

Follow-ups as needed:

  • If survey was completed: "In your survey you mentioned [specific item]. Tell me more about that."
  • "What made that a win? Was it speed, quality, something you couldn't have done at all otherwise?"
  • On the failure side: "What went wrong? Was it the tool, the situation, or something about how your organization handled it?"
  • If they have visibility: "How about at the organizational level? Any AI rollouts that worked well, or ones that fell flat?"
  • If organizational friction: "Is that a tooling problem, a training problem, or a people problem?"

Q5. Trust and Verification

~3 min

"Tell me about a time you trusted AI and shouldn't have. What happened? How do you decide whether to trust what AI gives you?"

Follow-ups as needed:

  • "After something like that, how do you recalibrate? Does it make you go back and question everything, or is it more contained?"
  • "Do you have an explicit process for checking AI's work, or is it more intuitive?"
  • If organizational context is rich: "Do different roles in your organization trust AI differently? Who checks, and who takes the first output?"

Q6. AI Resistance

~2 min

"Have you encountered people who resist using AI? What's behind their resistance?"

Follow-ups as needed:

  • "Do you think they have a point? Is there anything they're seeing that the enthusiasts are missing?"
  • If they describe specific resisters: "What happens when they push back? Does it change anything?"
  • If they were once resistant themselves: "You mentioned earlier that you were skeptical at first. How does that shape how you see the people who are still holding out?"
  • If organizational context: "Is resistance tolerated, or is there pressure to get on board?"

Q7. Disclosure Norms

~2 min

"Are norms forming at your workplace about when you disclose that AI helped with something? When do you mention it, and when do you not?"

Follow-ups as needed:

  • "Have you ever seen work product that felt like low-effort AI output? What was your reaction?"
  • If they describe hiding AI use: "What's driving that? Is it stigma, policy, or something else?"
  • If they describe open disclosure: "How did that norm get established? Was it explicit or did it evolve?"
  • "Is there a difference between disclosing AI use for something creative versus something routine?"

Q8. Skill Erosion

~2 min

"Do you worry about losing certain skills because you're leaning on AI? Which ones?"

Follow-ups as needed:

  • "Have you noticed any changes already, or is this more of an anticipation?"
  • If they name specific skills: "What would happen if you needed that skill and AI wasn't available?"
  • If they're not worried: "What makes you confident those skills will stick around?"
  • "Is there anything you deliberately do the hard way to keep a skill sharp?"

Q9. How AI Makes You Feel

~2 min

"Zoom out for a second. How does the increasing presence of AI in your world, both work and personal, make you feel?"

Follow-ups as needed:

  • If they express concern: "What's your single biggest fear?"
  • If they express optimism: "What's the breakthrough you're most hoping for?"

Q10. The Next Generation*

~2 min · Best for participants with seniority or mentorship responsibilities

"What about the next generation, people entering your field now who've never done the work without AI? What concerns you, or excites you, about that?"

Follow-ups as needed:

  • If mentorship responsibilities: "How does this change how you train or onboard people?"
  • If they express concern: "What specifically are they missing? Is it a skill, a way of thinking, or something else?"
  • If they express optimism: "What do they have that your generation didn't?"
  • If early-career: "Flip it around. What do you think the more experienced people don't get about how you use AI?"

Q11. The Gap

~2 min

"What's the biggest gap between what AI can do for you right now and what you actually need it to do?"

Follow-ups as needed:

  • "What would it take to close that gap?"
  • If organizational: "Is this a tooling problem, a policy problem, or something else?"

Closing

"Is there a question you think I should ask people during this conversation?"

"Thanks for sharing your experiences with me today. Just to reiterate, I won't identify you by name in any of the research reporting. If I think a clip of you explaining a particular point would be useful to the community, I will contact you to ask for your explicit consent to use a short video clip from our discussion. You are of course completely free to refuse. Your privacy is more important than my research."

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