Briefing
Why Simile combines what people do with what they say
Purchase records show a choice. Interviews can help explain it. Simile wants to bring those views together.
Two parts of the same story
Imagine a customer stops buying a product. Their purchase history shows the change, but it doesn't tell you why. Was it the price, the product, or something else? In Building the What-If Machine, Simile describes combining people's actions with surveys, interviews and experiments to model how they might respond to change. [1]
What to ask in a demo
For a buyer, the useful question is simple: can this approach help with the change you're considering? Bring an example, such as a new price or product. Ask which data the model uses and how the provider checked its predictions against real outcomes. You want to see how the different inputs help answer your question, not just a list of the data available.
