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Themes are patterns Humanize finds across all your sessions — ideas, sentiments, or behaviors that came up with multiple participants, often across different topics.

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Why it matters

Individual quotes tell a story. Themes tell you whether it’s a common story. When five participants independently bring up the same frustration across three different sessions, that’s a theme — and it’s probably worth acting on.

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What’s in it

Each theme shows:
  • Name and description — one claim, specific enough to check against a participant’s own words
  • Participant count — how many people expressed it
  • Quotes — direct quotes, attributed by segment and age (“Lapsed user, 38”) or participant number, never by name. In a concept-test survey, a quote also shows a gray tag for each concept it’s about, such as “Concept A”. A second AI model checks every quote against the claim before it appears
  • Supercut — an auto-edited video reel of participants expressing the theme in their own words, when the theme has enough footage for one
Themes aren’t limited to a single question. A theme about “frustration with onboarding” might pull evidence from your onboarding question, your feature wishlist question, and your competitive comparison question — giving you a cross-cutting view you wouldn’t get from reading questions one at a time.

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Opening a theme

Each theme opens in a side panel. Click an underlined phrase in a key finding, a theme in a chart on the Details tab, or a theme tag in a participant’s panel.

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Using themes in your work

  • Research reports — use themes as your main sections, with quotes as evidence
  • Stakeholder presentations — lead with top themes and participant counts
  • Affinity mapping — themes work as pre-built affinity groups
  • Tracking over time — compare themes across studies to see how perspectives shift