| name | respondent-panel |
| description | Run a panel of independent synthetic respondents against copy, a slogan, brand values, a landing page, or any user-facing text — each in an isolated context, each a different specific person — then read the panel for convergence and divergence. Use when the user asks "how does this land", "what would people think of this", "test this tagline", "get reactions to this copy", "run a panel", or wants gut-level audience reaction rather than expert critique. Complements persona-review, which is expert stakeholder critique of a document. Triggers on respondent panel, how does this land, what would people think, test this tagline, reactions to this copy, gut reaction, audience reaction. |
| handoffs | [{"to":"ux-writing","when":"the panel shows copy landing wrong and the rewrite is owed"}] |
| accepts | [{"from":"type-specimen"},{"from":"ux-writing"},{"from":"prototype"}] |
Respondent Panel
Announce at start: "I'm using the humane:respondent-panel skill to collect gut reactions from isolated synthetic respondents."
Gut-level audience reaction to something user-facing, from several people at once,
each of whom has seen only the thing itself.
One reaction is an anecdote. Five reactions that all stumble on the same word is a
finding. This skill is about getting the second one.
When to invoke
- "How does this tagline land?"
- "What would actual people think of this?"
- "Test this copy / these brand values / this landing page hero."
- "Run a respondent panel."
- After
jtbd or brandkit, to check whether the language you landed on survives
contact with someone who has not read the reasoning.
When NOT to invoke
- The artifact is a document meant to be studied — a PRD, a spec, a pitch deck
script. That is
persona-review: expert stakeholders reading carefully and
arguing back. This skill is strangers glancing.
- You want a usability judgement of an interface. That is
nielsen-heuristics.
- You want the copy fixed. Respondents deliberately do not rewrite; bring their
reactions back and revise yourself —
ux-writing owns the rewrite, and knows to
revise against convergent findings only.
The one rule
Respondents see the artifact and nothing else.
Not the brief, not the JTBD corpus, not the positioning rationale, not the six
drafts you rejected, not what you were hoping they would feel. Every sentence of
context you add buys you a more agreeable answer and a less true one.
This is why respondents run in isolated contexts — a respondent that shares
your session has already read everything you know and cannot un-read it.
Claude Code extras: launch each respondent as the bundled
synthetic-respondent agent, all in a single message so they run concurrently
and independently. Pass the artifact verbatim plus that respondent's persona
brief — nothing else.
On other agents: run them sequentially in fresh sessions (or after
clearing context), pasting only the persona brief and the artifact. If neither
is possible, run one respondent and say plainly in the output that it is a
single uncontaminated reaction, not a panel.
Workflow
Step 1 — Get the artifact
Ask for the exact text or file to react to. Take it verbatim. Do not tidy
typos, expand abbreviations, or add the surrounding context you think is missing —
if it is missing for respondents, it will be missing for real readers, and that is
itself the finding.
Note the medium, because it sets the encounter: a billboard glimpsed at speed, an
app-store subtitle, a landing-page hero, a cold email subject line. Tell each
respondent where they are seeing it.
Step 2 — Build the panel
Default to 5 respondents. Three is thin; beyond seven you are paying for
repetition.
Vary them along axes that plausibly change the reaction to this artifact. Pick
3–4 axes and make each respondent specific:
| Axis | Why it moves the reaction |
|---|
| Relationship to the category | Newcomer vs. burned-before vs. current happy user of a competitor |
| Ad exposure | Someone who sees forty pitches a day is bored where a rare viewer is curious |
| Age / life stage | Changes what references land and what reads as dated |
| Place & language background | Idioms and wordplay travel badly; non-native readers catch ambiguity |
| Buying power over this | Someone who would pay reads the claims differently than someone who wouldn't |
Write each brief as a person, not a segment — two or three concrete sentences.
"38, runs a two-van plumbing business outside Leeds, has bought three scheduling
apps and abandoned all of them, reads nothing about software" beats "SMB owner,
skeptical."
Ask the user to confirm the panel before spending on it, and say which axes you
varied and why. If the artifact is aimed at a specific audience the user has already
described (a jtbd.json persona, a stated target market), build the panel around
that audience rather than a generic public — but keep at least one respondent from
outside it, because that is who tells you when the copy only works for insiders.
Step 3 — Run them
All respondents get the identical artifact and medium. Only the persona brief
differs. Never tell a respondent what the others said.
Step 4 — Read the panel
The panel is not a vote. Do not average the reactions or declare a winner. Report:
- Convergence — anything two or more respondents independently hit. Same word
misread, same confusion about what is being sold, same comparison to another
brand. This is the strongest signal the method produces; lead with it and quote
the respondents directly.
- Divergence — where they split, and along which axis. If the newcomers liked
it and everyone who has used a competitor was suspicious, that is a much more
useful sentence than "reactions were mixed."
- Comprehension — how many understood what is being sold, in one pass, without
help. Report this as a count. It is often the real finding and it is easy to lose
under the more colourful reactions.
- Dead spots — parts of the artifact that no respondent mentioned at all. Copy
nobody reacted to is copy nobody read.
- What actually landed — the specific phrases that worked, named. A panel that
only reports problems will get you a rewrite that loses the good parts.
Quote respondents verbatim rather than paraphrasing them into marketing language.
The unpolished phrasing is the evidence — "I thought it was an insurance thing"
survives translation into "brand-category confusion" badly.
Step 5 — Hand off
State clearly what this panel is and is not: synthetic reactions that surface
confusion, clichés, and tone problems cheaply and early. They are a rehearsal for
contact with real people, not a replacement for it. Never present panel output as
market research, and never attach a confidence percentage to it.
Then offer the next step:
- Revise the copy with
ux-writing against the convergent findings, then re-run the
same panel — same briefs, so the comparison is clean.
- Run
before-after if the artifact is claiming a transformation.
- Take the convergent findings to real users, if any are reachable.
Output
Markdown. Convergence first, then divergence by axis, then comprehension count,
then dead spots, then what landed. Full individual reactions go at the end, under a
heading, so the reader meets the pattern before the anecdotes.
