A Machine Learning Company worked with Anchor & Alpine (via Sawaya Consulting) for several years to design the UI/UX of their powerful machine learning platform.

They had an amazing prototype. It’s an incredibly sophisticated platform that combines asset management, futuristic visual search, and business intelligence. They brought us on board to present this powerful engineering in an intuitive user interface.

Process

We began the process of working with Machine Learning Company by identifying their Personas.

  • Who are the people that use this system?
  • What would they say about the product in their own words?
  • How often do they use it?
  • What is their technical skill level?

Answering these questions kept the team aligned and working towards meeting customer needs and not just building something that we thought would be cool or interesting or building something just because we could.

Please note, some of this information is confidential and has been obscured or redacted from this presentation. 

Once we knew who our users were we could focus on what we wanted them to be able to do. We built sitemapsuser flows, and brainstormed solutions. We built out and continue to maintain a styleguide for the project.

As the platform comes together some things just work. Some things…not so much. Once we had a good base we started to tackle problems from different ends—sometimes the engineers would pull together a prototype and we would lay the UI on top. Sometimes we would do a UI and then the engineers would base the functionality and code on that.

Working in this flexible way keeps everyone efficient, prevents bottle necks, and provides the most well-rounded and collaborative environment for ideas to thrive.

Solution

Machine Learning Company was a several-year UI/UX project. We dropped right in with the team for a long engagement. We work with customer feedback, new features, and general user experience improvements. That’s the power of a firm that is involved from the business side to beyond client delivery.

Machine Learning Company ingested large sets of public data to run machine learning tests on. The platform is sophisticated enough that it can tell the difference between ‘groups of people’, ‘people posing for group photos’, and ‘armies’ without any human interference.

Results

A major movie studio needed to complete a specific video search—it took 27 man-hours to complete the request. With Machine Learning Company, the same task took 3 minutes.

Images courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

An oil and gas client needed to complete a M&A valuation with untagged images and PDFs. It took 3 months and they were only able to complete 10% data coverage. With Machine Learning Company, the same task took 1 month with 90% data coverage.

Images courtesy of Common Data Access Limited.

Design System Manual (DSM)

The product is always evolving. To keep teams of designers, developers, and product managers aligned a design system manual (DSM) of all elements and components was created.

EVP of UX & Product Tenure

We were doing so much good work and enjoying the project when our director was invited to join the pre-money startup as EVP of UX & Product. Amber joined full time and was named keyman in the $7M VC funding as well as an officer of the company. Her tenure lasted a few years and she even moved to the Bay Area to be in the office with the team. As a senior member of the ELT she helped the company grow by 600% and helped negotiate several of the contracts—including the ones for several million dollars and with the names of the biggest film studios.

Amber joined the team full time in the Bay Area

I wish working with every consulting group were as outstanding as our experience with [Anchor & Alpine]—flawless project management, clear communication, and a relentless ability to deliver.  There are UI designers and then there is Amber, who seems to have “creative AND usable interactive interface” running through her blood. It’s a complete joy to work with her, and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Founder & Executive Chair

[Anchor & Alpine’s] UX designs save me hours of programming time with well-thought out mockups that allow our developers to build the UI right the first time. This helps us provide a clear vision to align our technology and business teams and we are able to get a head start communicating our plans to customers and investors.

Founder & CEO