InsightBridge: Enhancing Empathizing with Users through Real-Time Information Synthesis and Visual Communication

User-centered design necessitates researchers deeply understanding target users throughout the design process. However, during early-stage user interviews, researchers may misinterpret users due to time constraints, incorrect assumptions, and communication barriers. To address this challenge, we introduce InsightBridge , a tool that supports real-time, AI-assisted information synthesis and visual-based verification. InsightBridge automatically organizes relevant information from ongoing interview conversations into an empathy map. It further allows researchers to specify elements to generate visual abstracts depicting the selected information, and then review these visuals with users to refine the visuals as needed. We evaluated the effectiveness of InsightBridge through a within-subject study (N=32) from both the researchers' and users' perspectives. Our findings indicate that InsightBridge can assist researchers in note-taking and organization, as well as in-time visual checking, thereby enhancing mutual understanding with users. Additionally, users' discussions of visuals prompt them to recall overlooked details and scenarios, leading to more insightful ideas.