TOOLS FOR YOUR Y2 TASKS
Y2's AI toolkit
Hey Y2s! Your TAs have put together tools to help with different parts of your project, from your first research questions to your final presentation.
Use AI for guidance and support. Keep the thinking and the work yours.
Before you dive in: AI ethics
01
Protect people’s privacy
Remove names and all personally identifying information from field notes and transcripts before sharing them with any AI tool.
02
Check every insight
Cross-check AI-generated insights against your raw data, especially when researching sensitive topics.
03
Own your decisions
Keep strategic and ethical choices in human hands. You decide which problems matter.
04
Keep human connection
Talk directly to your users. AI cannot replace empathy, conversations, or understanding people’s experiences.
05
Do the thinking
Take on the hard intellectual work yourself. Keep ownership of your project’s core thinking and analysis.
06
Use AI as support
Let it help organize notes or draft documents while you bring the founder effort, judgment, and critical thinking.
The toolkit
20 tools & usesTask numbers refer to your Y2 task booklet.
| Tool / Platform | Tasks | How it helps |
|---|---|---|
| NotebookLM | 1–6 | Bring together your task booklet, papers, reports, and interview material. Ask questions and connect information across your own sources. |
| ChatGPT / Gemini / Qwen | 1, 2, 3, 6 | Explore wicked problems, shape problem statements, organize causal factors, challenge ideas, and refine presentation scripts. |
| Gemini Deep Research | 1–3 | Work through research across multiple sources and bring the findings into a structured research brief. |
| Perplexity | 2, 3 | Explore a topic and find web sources with citations to help you map the research landscape. |
| Elicit | 2, 3 | Find academic literature, compare papers, and pull out evidence relevant to your research question. |
| Consensus | 2, 3 | Investigate research questions and check whether published scientific studies support a claim. |
| Claude | 3, 5 | Work through long PDFs and dense documents, organize stakeholder effects, spot patterns, and improve written analysis. |
| Dify | 1–6 | Build custom AI workflows and connected prompts for structured research and analysis. |
| Feishu (Lark) | 1–6 | Manage project databases, track survey metrics, organize interview materials, and collaborate on documents. |
| Notion AI | 1–6 | Keep research logs, interview notes, survey links, project folders, meeting notes, and tasks organized. |
| Otter.ai | 4 | Record and transcribe interviews so you can document and revisit the 10 required field interviews. |
| Whisper / MacWhisper | 4 | Explore an alternative transcription workflow when you need more control over where interview recordings and transcripts are processed. |
| Julius AI | 4, 5 | Explore Excel or CSV survey data, look for trends and relationships, create visualizations, and ask questions about the dataset. |
| Napkin AI | 2–6 | Turn ideas, causal relationships, research findings, and systems into clear visual diagrams. |
| Canva AI | 5, 6 | Communicate your findings through infographics and polished visual materials. |
| Gamma | 6 | Organize your research into a coherent presentation and build a draft of your final pitch deck. |
| Zotero | 2, 3 | Collect, organize, annotate, and cite academic papers and other sources as your research grows. |
| Grammarly / QuillBot | 1–6 | Proofread surveys, reports, and scripts. Improve clarity, grammar, and advanced English expression. |
| ChatGPT / Gemini for Field Research | 4, 5 | Draft neutral survey and interview questions, spot leading wording, and prepare structured templates for data analysis. |
| AI Critical Reviewer / Red-Team Prompt | 1–6 | Ask your AI to challenge your problem statement, causal assumptions, research claims, survey design, stakeholder analysis, and conclusions. Have it look for unsupported assumptions and confirmation bias. A way to use an AI assistant: add these instructions to your prompt or customize your agent’s personality. |
Tap a tool to see how it helps.