Fuzzy Math

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

​NORC is an international research institution at the University of Chicago. We’re non-partisan and work in a variety of mostly public interest fields like healthcare and education and economics. I’m the senior vice president of strategic communications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

We have quite a bit of creative direction and overarching web expertise in terms of web strategy here, but we don’t have information architects in-house. This specific need I was looking to hire for was an organization that could really think through in detail when we do large web launches and large system launches, a group that could really think through the user friendliness of the site and the overall usability.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We've worked on probably ten or so engagements, but some of them have been small exploratory projects and some of them have been larger pieces. They helped us recently with the launch of a product called ForeGround. We had a new group in house that was doing an analysis of real estate economics. They were looking at how different trends and economic sources affect commercial real estate buyers’ decisions and the kinds of data and analysis that they need to do their job. Fuzzy Math helped us think through that entire process and the entire structure of how it’s organized, the user needs, how those are being met online, and how those can be best displayed.

Another project we worked on together was called The General Social Survey. It’s one of the largest social science data sets in the country, second only to the U.S. Census, just to give a sense of scale. We’ve been working on a project to make that data more available to the research community called the GSS Data Explorer. People are coming to this data set from a variety of different perspectives, whether they’re students, professors or analysts. The interface had to be intuitive enough to work for super experts all the way down to people are just getting started analyzing social science. It was a big challenge and Fuzzy Math did a great job.

In general, Fuzzy Math handles the frontend planning, strategy, wire framing, user needs, research, process flows and use cases, etc. It’s usually two to three people per project. Ben [Partner, Fuzzy Math] is usually our principal and that is great. Then we have different IA’s depending on the project and their availability.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

I don’t remember initially why I chose them other than I thought they were the right fit for us. The portfolio that we looked at really evidenced a wide range of things that we could engage them on, both small scale and larger scale endeavors. The second reason is that we just like them. One thing we really value at NORC is collegiality. We really believe work should be a fun, cool place where you enjoy the people you’re working with. Fuzzy Math has a good vibe and life is too short to not work with cool people.

How much have you invested with them?

Around $200,000-$400,000 over the course of time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The easiest metric I can give you is that different people across the organization hire them. When they do work for us, they create jealousy with the other teams. They help people realize that it’s not just about design, it's about being super well thought-through in terms of usability and user experience.

When my teams and I came in seven years ago, we rebranded the organization as a modern and fresh research institution rather than a tired and old organization. Fuzzy Math has really helped us contribute to that because so much these days is about not just how something looks, but how it makes you feel and what type of experience you had with it. They really contribute to our ability to do that for our stakeholders.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re always on time. There’s only been one issue that I remember and it was completely our fault. That doesn’t really happen anymore unless we add components or modules at the last minute.

They’re super good at hitting the marks they’re asked to hit. They’re one of the best firms I’ve ever worked with in that regard. We’ve always found them to be of really consistent quality, which is a little surprising. I came from the web development side of the house and it's common to see inconsistencies in resources, but Fuzzy Math has really amazingly consistent quality in the people they hire.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re fun to work with and they do great work. I keep hiring them over and over. I’m super picky, just to put a point on it.

There are a lot of different firms who do basically the same things, but I feel like Fuzzy Math is really good at giving you what you need. They’re good at cutting to the chase. They’re good at saying, “I hear your problem. What you guys really need is…” I feel like they don’t just sell services to sell services. They really like to solve the problem well and as elegantly and efficiently as possible.

Are there any areas they could improve?

That would have been in the earlier engagement. It’s harder for me now because we have a system and a process down now.

If I were to think back at the things that they could have been better at, it took them some time to understand our nomenclature and what we do. Given that our users are scientists, it's pretty hard to understand if you’re a layman. I don’t know that this dings them per se. That would be something anyone who is a non-expert would have to do. Now It’s such a long going relationship that it’s a well-oiled machine at this point.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a design strategist at Allstate, the insurance company. I’m part of the innovation group. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

Our team is responsible for designing new products and services, usually outside of insurance.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We use Fuzzy Math to come up with product and service concepts based on a data platform we’ve designed to predict risks in claims. We needed to put those ideas into a deck that told a story from a user’s perspective.

I’ve used Fuzzy Math a few times, and we usually began with a kickoff meeting where they dove into any information we could give them. For this particular project, I sent them probably close to 600 pages of research. They were able to digest it all in a week, synthesize it so they knew where we were coming from, and kick off the ideation portion together in a workshop.

Our work has always been very iterative. We have ideation sessions together, and then they start working on the actual design assets over different projects. Some included concepts we’d already generated that they refined and synthesized into a story we could share with our leadership. We had about 4–5 people from Fuzzy Math working on our projects.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

I’d used them at a previous job and really liked the work they did, so I recommended them. For this project, we didn’t consider other companies.

How much have you invested with Fuzzy Math?

We’ve spent about $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I think the first engagement was in September of 2016. That lasted a few months, and we’ve since hired them 2 other times. We’re just wrapping up a project now that we started probably 2 months ago. We foresee additional projects taking place with Fuzzy Math related to this work. They’re our go-to design firm. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

The presentations they’ve developed and that we’ve delivered to our leaders have always been well-received. They designed an online report that just went out to several hundred people we have in a study, and we had open and click-through rates of about 85%. I think that speaks to how well-designed, clear, and useful their work is.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

They were easy to communicate with and available whenever we needed them. They always delivered everything on time. I think they used quite a few project management tools internally, but we mostly communicated via email. We can’t really use file-sharing stuff, but we did use Basecamp too.

What did you find most impressive about Fuzzy Math?

They’re just the nicest designers I’ve ever worked with. They’re smart and eager to jump into a new project. It’s really easy to hit the ground running with them.

Are there any areas Fuzzy Math could improve?

I wish their team was a little bigger so they had more designers. However, they’ve always delivered what we needed. I like that they do a pro bono project every year; that’s how I got in touch with them in the first place at my last job. I was impressed that they donated that much time on a large project. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

VelocityEHS is a software-as-a-service platform in the Environmental Health and Safety space. Our business model is to offer solutions that aid and support company’s need to manage complex reporting and record keeping obligations imposed by various state, federal and global regulatory agencies. These regulations are primarily in place to ensure employee safety and sustainability objectives.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

We needed to update our core product platform’s user experience and wanted to outsource that project to a specialized UX [user experience] firm as opposed to doing it in-house.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started with research, conceptualization, a design phase and a couple of wireframing sprints to lead us to a deliverable UX style guide and development framework that we could execute ourselves internally. We have a team that completed the interpretation of their deliverables and then our programmers moved forward with the development. We deliver most of our solutions in a desktop environment but parts of our solutions come through various mobile platforms. 

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

We had an opportunity to walk through the process with 5 firms including Fuzzy Math. We went through a 6-month vetting process of 3 of the firms to identify who would be the right fit. We selected them for several reasons including their basic process of UX design.

How much have you invested with Fuzzy Math?

We spent between $50,000 to $200,000 for this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project in January 2015, and the work was completed in September 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We haven’t fully executed the results of that project, but we’re planning on it in 2017. The work is still very relevant to us today and will be a strong differentiator for us in the marketplace. We have implemented some of the Fuzzy Math work in one of our mobile products mostly from a visual style guide standpoint. The results have been very strong. We’ve had very good adoption and utilization. 

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

The Fuzzy Math team listened well and incorporated the input and experience of our team into their deliverables. From a project management perspective, they were precise in their planning and sticking to the agreed milestones and work deliverables. As something of an unintended outcome, our team’s practices improved through osmosis – we learned from their approach and have incorporated many of the techniques they used during our project.

What did you find most impressive about Fuzzy Math?

They did a great job of being flexible with the different needs and personalities that we had within our company. They stand out in their ability to listen and manage their client diplomatically. I think we had a better product because of their abilities. We were very satisfied with our relationship with Fuzzy Math.

Are there any areas Fuzzy Math could improve?

In general, there’s a bit of duress when outsourcing work so heavily dependent on industry expertise. To no fault of Fuzzy Math they had to really stretch in a compressed period of time to pick up our customer pain points, industry drivers, competitive references, and economic aspects of the business. Success becomes dependent on the UX firm (in this case Fuzzy Math) developing a communication and cadence with the client to bridge that lack of expertise. Fuzzy Math was very adept at picking up as much of the context of our business as time allowed. In the end, the outsourcing approach puts inevitable pressure on results long term because a successful UX plan isn’t a point in time exercise. It’s a constant ongoing effort where the dynamics of the customer’s experience with your products are continually changing and you have to adapt to those changes as they are discovered. But Fuzzy Math gave us an excellent True north orientation to move forward against.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the chief executive officer of WiserCare, a healthcare IT software company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

We needed to develop initial user experience templates for our solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Fuzzy Math has handled the broad, end-to-end user experience design for our patient-facing site. The process involved in-depth research that we used to develop a 0.5 version of the platform. We also refined the system as users started to actually use it. 

I initially used Fuzzy Math for another company, at which I was the COO. I needed to overhaul our existing look and feel for healthcare workers. This is different from a normal consumer experience. It included initial wireframes, layouts, and actual CSS. I have also used Fuzzy Math while working for Microsoft. They helped overhaul a complete login experience for average consumers on a particular area of the site.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

I was on the management team of a company that employed a couple of Fuzzy Math's initial members.

How much have you invested with Fuzzy Math?

The total cost of Fuzzy Math's services has been around $750,000. We have an interesting deal wherein I pay Fuzzy Math through money and equity in the company.

What is the status of this engagement?

My very first engagement with Fuzzy Math was 8 to 10 years ago, and we have an ongoing partnership.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

When I started the company, we had a very basic version of the platform in play. Since then, our Net Promoter Score has gone from 46% to almost 91%. Our patient satisfaction scores have increased by about 30%.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

I'm lucky to have known Fuzzy Math's team for long enough that they are available to me whenever I call. We have no issues—Fuzzy Math knows how I work, so we have clear expectations. I may have been unfair regarding turnaround times, but Fuzzy Math's team has done its best to meet my demands. We use Slack, Box, and a number of other project management tools.

What did you find most impressive about Fuzzy Math?

Fuzzy Math could've grown fast if they'd wanted it, but their team only takes on projects where the content is actually interesting to them. They need to feel that they can actually add to the user experience, otherwise, Fuzzy Math doesn't accept the project. They're after high quality, which is obtained through the working space itself.

Are there any areas Fuzzy Math could improve?

Overall, any consulting firm can strive to communicate more. Fuzzy Math has waited until the right time to tell me about delays, versus letting me know upfront. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Interactive Health is a leading provider of outcomes-based wellness solutions to employer groups essentially creating healthier companies by creating healthier employees. I’m the chief information officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

We had an existing web platform for the participants in our wellness programs that we wanted to modernize. We also wanted to bring life to the voice of our health management piece by making it more of a trusted advisor, friendly voice through the web.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

It was a UI/UX engagement of an existing experience and user interface through market research as well as user-facing research to determine UX/UI for our upgraded enhanced website. That included R&D, visual concepting, and HTML and CSS template delivery.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

They were recommended by a very trusted colleague. We looked at several other vendors as well. The reputation of the colleague who recommended them was a personal reason for me to choose them. They also had great strength on the softer side of UI/UX when it comes to research as well as the technical side in HTML and CSS. They had a strong willingness to work within the project framework that we were accustomed to as opposed to imposing their methodology.

How much have you invested with Fuzzy Math?

We’ve spent $50,000 to $200,000 with them so far in our relationship.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in the fall of 2015 and continue to work with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We launched the new web tool three weeks ago. We’ve had an extreme amount of positive feedback from existing clients, which are large employers, and their employees on the ease of use of the website and the visual appeal. We’ve seen some pretty impressive engagement metrics, but it’s still early in the process. We have a service where we connect users with their physician, and they can provide the results of their wellness program through our website. That’s been 100% increase year over year which was a pretty impressive statistic for us. Through that process, we identify key moments in the users’ experience that we want to emphasize to someone that has health risks of the importance of engaging with their physician.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very adaptable to work within our project management methodology. Fuzzy Math was also very strong in meeting deadlines. In this project, we used Basecamp and JIRA.

What did you find most impressive about Fuzzy Math?

Their willingness to partner with us has been great. When we both have strong ideas, they’re willing to collaborate, listen to us, and do the best work for us.

Are there any areas Fuzzy Math could improve?

I can’t think of anything. Any issues in the project that I can think of were on our end.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Wonderlic, Inc. is a test publisher that makes cognitive ability, personality, motivation, and other psychometric assessments. These are used for measuring fit to the job and prospective applicants.

I work as Wonderlic’s vice president of technology. I also serve as the lead on strategy for our web products and web tools.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

Our company was re-envisioning how we connect our clients to the delight of finding the right candidate to fit their job. We were doing a platform re-architecture from the ground up, specifically our primary client-facing web application. Our site was 10 years old and had become very confused. It had grown organically into a hodgepodge of different features, information elements, and capabilities. The opportunity that we saw, in addition to creating a new technology backend for our platform, was to invest in streamlining and redefining our value proposition and the clarity of our client-facing system. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I reached out to Fuzzy Math to get their help in re-envisioning how our test platform could serve users. We wanted to leverage the best in class, user experience, design, information architecture, and interaction design elements. We used them in the course of 5 design sprints. First, we did some upfront view X pattern work to codify our marketing tone and modernize our look and feel. We came up with style guides, font patterns, and all the building blocks of the new user experience. Then, we ran a series of design sprints on tons of use cases that our platform serves today, including our existing legacy platforms. Together, we conceptualized a new vision, worked through wireframes, did comp generation, built prototypes, and conducted user research. We did 5 rounds of that with our clients. The process involved everything our product does to this point as well as a number of use cases that we thought users would want to explore. It took about a year to go through all these design sprints.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

My company has never done anything with user research or user experience design before. I personally had no clue of how to get started with that. Initially, I researched firms in Chicago. We wanted to find a firm that had a good, clear statement of its methodology and a value-driven approach. We had concerns about working with a boutique firm that was flashier and had more sex appeal in a design sense. We were concerned we would get more of that and less methodology, less anchoring. We wanted to make sure they understood our clients and their needs and connect that to our product. After looking at 3 firms and having an interview process, we chose Fuzzy Math. We felt that Fuzzy Math could teach us about human-centered design. Also, they had enough experience and flash to take us in the direction we wanted to go.

How much have you invested with Fuzzy Math?

We spent $300,000 to $400,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from October 2013 to October 2014. We launched the MVP version of our new test platform in December last year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Since the new product launched in December 2015, we’ve added 700 new customers. Our client conversion rate is around 23%. With new client acquisition and client migration, we’ve had tremendous success with the new platform. It has really improved our interactions with existing clients who transition over to the new platform. With new clients, having people understand how we can help them in their workflows has been very difficult. We’ve had overwhelming success with that compared to our old platform.

Our psychometric assessments generate a lot of granular results. These tests give very specific information about how an individual relates to the disposition and requirements of a given job. Fuzzy Math helped us distil that down to a single result, allowing us to rank our candidates. Supporting information is presented in a paced, manageable way that doesn’t overwhelm our clients.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

They were good. It was a challenging project, given that we had such a broad scope. We were constantly throwing new ideas and new features at them. When there was a tightly defined scope, their product management was strong. When it was hazier, they struggled a little bit but they got better over time. It was something that they were working on.

What did you find most impressive about Fuzzy Math?

I appreciated that Fuzzy Math had a very clear methodology. It was easy to get conceptually behind what they were doing and why they were doing it. It helped us understand where our dollars were going. That was a real strength of their model, which was not the same with the other firms that interviewed. They would work well with someone is looking to get into UX who hasn’t previously done that and doesn’t know how to navigate that space. They’re very good at giving a clear understanding of what they do, why they do it, how that serves the process overall, and doing it to see the finished product.

I enjoyed that we worked directly with one of the partners, Mark Baldino. He handled both engagement management and project management. He also served as an evangelist for what his team was working on. It was useful to have one point of contact as opposed to working separately with a liaison, a project manager, and an account manager. It was very comfortable for us having him oversee the engagement and working with him directly. We got the opportunity to raise concerns or pursue things that we wanted to do. It was a very direct and easy access model, which we really liked.

Are there any areas Fuzzy Math could improve?

The only critique I would give is that their model is more of a fixed bid upfront and less of a time and materials perspective. There was a frequent conflict between that initial estimate and the actual time it took as we iterated through the process. The scope and scale of our project warranted an iterative, Agile project management style. It’s different for every project and isn’t going to be required for every case, but it was needed for ours. Our learning from the process is that we really need to invest more in developing those skills. That would have helped us avoid some of the miscommunication we had. We had mismatched expectations about what we thought we could do, what we were getting, and what we needed to do more of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive at CIRM

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

CIRM manages interest rate risk for large corporate borrowers across a variety of industries.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Fuzzy Math to accomplish?

• Design our app interface

SOLUTION

How did you find Fuzzy Math?

Other

Why did you select Fuzzy Math over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Fuzzy Math were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

User interface experience and design for integrated client and internal app. Designed with evolving needs and growth of our organization in mind. Work is ongoing as our needs change.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

75%+ client adoption rate within the first year of release!

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Great collaboration and communication throughout. The Fuzzy Math team helped us do real time cost/benefit analyses on project changes to maintain both the project budget and scheduled delivery timing.

What was your primary form of communication with Fuzzy Math?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The culture of listening first. Their team of highly talented, skilled, and empathetic professionals is impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Fuzzy Math could have done differently?

Not that I’ve experienced this far