04ResearchRole · GenAI Research Associate, USC Marshall2025

AI Adoption Research

Graduate research on Google Search AI Mode and Gemini: how AI features affect user behavior, engagement, and adoption across the product lifecycle, with implications for roadmap prioritization and success metrics. Conducted as Graduate Research Associate, USC Marshall Department of Business Communication.

TL;DR

Two graduate studies on how platform-scale products introduce AI without breaking trusted user habits, with risk framing recommendations for launch teams.

Graduate research on how products like Search and Gemini can introduce AI without breaking the trusted habits billions of people rely on.

2
Two studies, 2025
What I Noticed

The most interesting marketing question in the world right now: how do you introduce AI to billions of people without disrupting the habits that made Search feel indispensable in the first place?

Users don't resist AI in Search. They resist anything that breaks the habit loop they've trusted for twenty years.
What I Did

Conducted two independent studies:

The Power of Google AI Search Mode: Impact on User Behavior & Engagement (November 2025).

UX Research to Better Meet Target User Needs: Google Gemini (October 2025).

How It Came Together

Click any image to enlarge

Synthesis across use cases, usability, EQ for UX, and pain points from the Gemini study.
Positioning analysis showing how a chatbot-first UX collapses Gemini into a text-to-text tool alongside ChatGPT, obscuring its GenAI image and video capabilities.
What Happened
One key finding
AI Mode reshapes what users click, not whether they search.

The Power of Google AI Search Mode, November 2025.

One key finding
Trust in Gemini rises when the model shows its reasoning, not just its answer.

UX Research to Better Meet Target User Needs: Google Gemini, October 2025.

What I'd Tackle Next

Extend the AI Mode study into a longitudinal view as user habits stabilize.