LISTEN CASE STUDY
How Canva uses Listen to efficiently access more human insights
Global research in hours
Canva lets anyone create professional designs in their web browser. From social media posts to pitch decks, over 220 million people use it monthly - and when they needed to deeply understand these users, they turned to Listen Labs.
Matt Harris is the Research & Insight Lead for Europe at Canva — the world’s leading all in one platform for collaboration and visual communication.
“Ever since the company was founded, we start with the user,” Matt said. The whole point of marketing is being able to move people, whether that’s toward a feeling, a product, or a new way of thinking. When that process starts with understanding the people you’re trying to communicate with, it makes everything better. That’s what market research is all about. Matt and his team have used Listen Labs to lean into the desire to get to know their users better, and to do so more efficiently.
Increased capacity for research
“The nice thing about AI moderated interviews is that it makes research at scale so much more economical,” Matt said. He explained that with Listen, they’ve been able to do research in areas where they simply wouldn’t have had the time or resources to do so before. Now, they can do those large, at-scale research projects with fewer assumptions and get consumer understandings from more markets.
It has also improved their research process by allowing Matt and his team to eliminate inefficiencies and get to the exciting part of their job more quickly.
“At Canva there’s a really strong emphasis on finding efficiencies through using AI. In the case of Listen, the value that AI adds is unlocking qualitative research at scale in a way that we haven’t done before.”
“There’s a lot of rote work in market research, and a lot of potential for AI to take care of that,” Matt said, “whether that’s designing research, analyzing research, or even moderating interviews. It allows us to focus on the important bit, which is understanding the consumer.”
Faster analysis of rich insights
Matt described a recent exploratory qualitative research project they ran across all international markets using Listen. They wanted to understand more of the fundamental needs, barriers, and usage of their product. “What Listen enables us to do is get qualitative richness and authentic human stories quickly and efficiently at scale,” he said.
That quickness and depth is powered by the AI analysis built into the platform. “It enables me to get a really quick summary of genuinely interesting insights, interact with the data, pull out themes, adjust themes, and get that quantified,” Matt explained. “That’s a process that just a few years ago would have been done completely manually and would’ve been not viable at the kind of scale we’re able to get with Listen.”
Another impactful difference for Matt was the quality of the responses.
“There’s a real challenge in the marketing industry at the moment in terms of sample quality for qualitative and quantitative insights.” he said. “One of the first ‘wow’ moments for me when I logged into Listen was seeing the fist video responses to my questions. And seeing these long, authentic human stories — people talking about themselves in a very personal way.”
While a traditional survey has closed questions and is entirely text-based, the video responses in Listen allow people to give richer and more honest responses. That leads to better quality interviews and better insights.
The future of AI in market research
“Canva’s got a really exciting future ahead of it,” Matt said, “And thinking about research and insights specifically, I’m excited to cut down the time and the effort between a business question or a problem and getting some sort of answer. Doing that means Canva can accelerate growth and I can spend more time doing the bits of my job that I enjoy.”
While some might be scared of what the development of AI means for market researchers, Matt is looking toward the future with open arms.
“We have to stay focused on the value that humans add at the end in terms of connection and understanding. Then it becomes exciting,” he said, “because AI is moving us faster toward that important bit. We’re bringing the business closer to consumers and closer to consumer understanding. Taking away a lot of the busy work and getting straight to the insight.”