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John Whalen, PhD

John Whalen, PhD

11.8K Subscribers

CEO, AI Research Leader, Cognitive Scientist, O'Reilly Author

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John Whalen, PhD will transform your research with Agentic AI

I’m CEO of Brilliant Experience, have a PhD in cognitive science, and wrote Design for How People Think (O’Reilly).

For 20 years, I’ve helped teams at companies like Google, GSK, and Capital One better understand their customers, capture insights, and build better products.

When AI started reshaping research, I got curious and learned. My team ran “AI vs. Humans” studies to see where AI excels, where human judgment matters most, and how to effectively blend both.

I’ll teach you how to create trustworthy AI research workflows that let you trace every step and insight.

Then advance to the next course and learn to orchestrate agentic research teams, work strategically with synthetic users grounded in real data, and bring in human judgement so you can scale research without losing rigor.

Key Clients
Google
Capital One
Bloomberg
GSK
Pinterest

Alumni reviews

Agentic AI for Research: Build Custom Workflows & Synthetic Users

Thank you so much for the course! It was really great, and I found a lot of useful and new information in it. What I especially appreciated is that the course opens up a huge area of knowledge that I can continue exploring further and applying in practice. To be honest, I didn’t immediately understand the course structure, and going through such a large amount of information took more time than I expected. But I actually see this as a positive thing: the course is rich, thoughtful, and worth coming back to. Thank you for the course and for all the work behind it!
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Alesia

April 2026
Team Lead Product Research · Fundraiseup

Agentic AI for Research: Build Custom Workflows & Synthetic Users

John is an experienced, knowledgable and personable instructor. This course allowed my classmates and I to explore automating workflows and building AI agents according to our own needs and preferred tools. I learned a great deal from his thoughtful instruction as well as engaging class discussions. It is the perfect follow-up to his earlier course, "AI for Customer Research: Future-Proof Your UX & Product Skills."
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Anna

April 2026
User Experience Research Leader · —

Agentic AI for Research: Build Custom Workflows & Synthetic Users

This course has (more than anything I've done or learned) completely changed the way I interact with AI. I cannot recommend this course enough to anyone. John teaches things very simply through first principles, has incredibly clean curriculum, and spends time with the students to make sure we completely understand material before moving on. Beyond that, the diversity of our cohort peers opens up completely new perspectives on how to leverage AI to produce outsized value for any position in an organization. I feel like I've learned more in 4 weeks than the last 2 years about how to use AI, and feel wildly optimistic about using it moving forward as a Product Designer!
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Albert

April 2026
Product Design Manager · MasterControl Inc

Agentic AI for Research: Build Custom Workflows & Synthetic Users

Need to learn and do simultaneously as your work continues to evolve at a breakneck speed? John is here for you! This class beautifully blends hands-on experience while providing the conceptual framing to keep you centered on your intended outcomes. What I love about how John approaches this work is that he is as quick to pick up a new tool and workflow as he is to move on to a better one as they emerge. This helps you not only gain a better sense for how to operate today, but how to pivot as changes inevitably come.
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Shane

April 2026
Principle Program Manager · Autodesk

Agentic AI for Research: Build Custom Workflows & Synthetic Users

I thought I was pretty advanced in using AI for research, but the course showed me how much I had to learn. Instead of using basic chatting, we started building agentic flows that actually work. Joining (or watching) the office hours was super helpful for digging into more challenging research topics, I highly recommend making time for them. And the provided materials were great whenever I needed to look something up again.
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Mig-lė

April 2026
Insight & Research Manager · Telia