Fuzzy Math

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of product management and development at software developer. My team oversees a software suite that supports higher education institutions and course materials management.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

We’ve used them for a few different projects. We initially brought them on to do a dashboard to track instructor submissions, but have since used them for two larger projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

In addition to the compliance dashboard project and an analytics dashboard for our publisher partners, one of the most important projects they worked on was a UI overhaul for one of our products. They took a holistic approach and analyzed our website. Once that was complete, they gave us an evaluation of what was working and what could be designed better.

We discussed our vision, and they came up with a few different versions of what they thought would benefit us. After we gave them feedback, they built updated wireframes and came up with a solidly consistent look and feel for us. It’s clean and concise, and includes a comprehensive pattern library. They created a fantastic, living document with embedded HTML. There is no guesswork on how to build each icon or button, all we have to do is grab it and insert it into the code whenever we want to make changes.

What is the team composition?

We interacted with a team of three or four people, including a project lead and a design lead. It was good to have a mix of people working on the project, since they each brought a different opinion and viewpoint to guide the process.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

My former boss discovered them and brought them in for the first projects we did with them. The first project was the single-page compliance dashboard, which they did a good job on. I liked their working style, so when the time came to redo my UI, I immediately reached out to them about the project.

How much have you invested with them?

I believe we’ve spent around $80,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked with them on several projects, but the UI redesign started around January 2016 and ran through April 2016.

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

The biggest indicator of the impact is all the positive feedback we’ve received regarding the new UI. Previously, our feedback was mixed, which was one reason we decided to do this revamp. We immediately heard positive responses from the campuses and stores that have our products, so we know the project has paid off.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

Deliverables are always right on target. They always stick to the timelines we agree upon in the statement of work and often deliver ahead of schedule. The quality is never rushed, and they clearly spend a lot of time and care on our projects.

We email regularly and have half-hour weekly meetings to go over touch points. Each project has a set of milestones that we establish at the beginning. As they complete each milestone, they check it off, send us previews of the work, and move on to the next part of the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their approach is very professional, but also laidback and casual. I’m not a serious person, so that kind of blend appeals to me. Even though they’re not exclusively our partner, they’re fully invested in our projects and the final results.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’ve had nothing but really good experiences with them. They do really well with project management and deliverables, and I can’t think of any criticisms for them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you work with any third-party vendor that isn’t physically in your office, keep the lines of communication open. We’re always most successful when we have weekly updates to keep the project on track. They process stayed focused and we didn’t have to go back and fix things.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the CTO and EVP at SAP Fieldglass, a platform allowing large companies to manage their non-employee labor and supply-chain associated with it, including contractors, consultants, offshore resources, and service providers. Large companies tend to have huge quilts of these people working for them, and our platform helps them manage the entire process.

I am currently CEO at Catalytic, a company providing a platform which helps companies streamline and optimize their processes through better codification, guidance for users, and automation of other tasks.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

The need with my previous company was a combination of general interface uplift with a focus on refreshing and simplifying it. It was an enterprise software we’d grown over a long period of time, so the nature of the beast was that it had grown in complexity. We’d been entrenched in building the software for 8 years, so we needed a process that would challenge our approach. It made sense to bring in a fresh perspective to focus on UX.

We didn’t have enough work to hire someone who really understood UX and all the various pieces we needed to make this successful, which is why we went to an agency.

What was the scope of their involvement?

In the first engagement we had a series of projects, the first of which had a pretty broad canvas and set the tone of our continued work with Fuzzy Math. We told them that it was our main product, so we wanted them to be relatively unconstrained in how they thought about a new version of it. We gave them the major components, some of the main use cases (which had to be available to everyone), some of the edgier ones, and some of the ones we considered redundant, which would be disposed of or moved to a more obscure part of the application. We then gave Fuzzy Math freedom in working with the product from a proposal perspective. We also gave them access to customers and had them participate in a couple calls.

Fuzzy Math had the chance to conduct their own studies, some of which we were involved in. They also got to talk to our services team, including the helpdesk, to get a perspective of what the current product problems were. We also engaged them with two of our customers that had their own UX teams, and were interested in helping us on this front. Those were great, forward-thinking companies, committed to simplifying the overall experience for their users.

We handled the implementation ourselves, but Fuzzy Math did create some live prototypes for us, as well as delivering some frontend JavaScript examples. They primarily returned design documents, including wireframes and a style guide. It was mostly static collateral, but this is what we needed.

We brought Fuzzy Math in very early with Catalytic, our second engagement, because we didn’t have many resources as a startup. Having someone work with us on a contract basis made a lot of sense since we needed many more people to focus on specific areas. Fuzzy Math worked on a part of our app that we didn’t have the resources to develop, but that needed to be started quickly. We wanted someone to put a lot of attention into what it might look like, what types of functionalities it should have, the API design, and how it would impact the main part of the app. All of these things can have a lot of interplay.

Fuzzy Math also helped us think through this part of our app and set it out from beginning to end. We had them involved in the core part of the app as we started to put out out engineering-heavy product. We involved a design director so it wouldn’t be so heavily focused on engineering, but he easily became overwhelmed having to manage an entire team alone, so we knew we needed help and a specialized UX perspective. Fuzzy Math offered a lot of feedback, which was great. They were acting as early potential users while also providing feedback from a UX standpoint. This all worked out very well.

What is the team dynamic?

The initial project was more of a heavy lift, and we had more people involved in it on a fulltime basis. I’m not sure how many people were involved behind the scenes, but we actively saw at least 3 people.

After the initial phase, we started focusing on specific areas for Fuzzy Math to target so that we could make incremental improvements. Once we went into that mode, we retained 1.5-3 resources. The scope tapered off from both our ends after the first engagement because we wanted them to come in and take bite-sized chunks.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

I went to a couple of my peers in the Chicago tech community and asked about a company that focused on UX. I didn’t want designers, but rather people who could work on user experience, making the product feel better instead of looking better. One of my initial impressions during the search process was that there wasn't a lot of differentiation between visual and user experience design.

Many of the initial people I reached out to were more focused on the aesthetics. A few of my friends came back with Fuzzy Math, which made me feel good about the choice. We also looked at another company, but the referrals and recommendations from the friends I trusted, and who’d actually had hands-on experience with Fuzzy Math, were the primary decision-making criteria.

I’ve had a similar experience with Fuzzy Math across my current company and SAP Fieldglass. The fact that I’ve used them across multiple companies probably says something in and of itself.

How much have you invested with them?

The SAP project took place a long time ago., so I can’t accurately recall the cost. It was a small part of our overall budget, and I may not have had a lot to do with the payment. Over the course of our multiple-year collaboration, the overall cost may have surpassed $900,000.

The project at our current startup is a more significant part of the budget, but overall, it’s still small.

What is the status of this engagement?

The initial project ran for 6 months, from the initial information-gathering and interview phase, to the design iterations. We then went into an ongoing mode, continuing to work with Fuzzy Math all the way into 2015. I'm not sure when we first engaged them, but the collaboration ran for at least 6 years.

The Catalytic project started in early 2016. Fuzzy Math worked with us for 2-3 months, after which we set up an in-house UX team. This approach is more central to what we do, and the differentiation we have as a company. We would definitely continue to use then if we didn’t have an internal team, and I will still probably reach out to them for augmentation. Fuzzy Math has been very helpful, despite the fact that we’re not using them officially right now.

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

We did not quantify the impact with metrics, but perhaps the best indicator of success is that we incorporated quite a number of Fuzzy Math's recommendations into our product. With many consultants, their recommendations are often unusable or ignored for other reasons. With Fuzzy Math, most of their output was very practical and adopted.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

If they had any problems delivering, we certainly didn’t get to see it, and Fuzzy Math generally delivered what we agreed to within the timelines. There may have been a few slips over the course of working together, but there was nothing that would make me think this company was not able to manage its workload. In general, Fuzzy Math did a good job managing everything. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They work well holistically, and bring together an overall package which I find fascinating. It’s not design-heavy or centered on wireframes, and we ended up with a good, practical package. They thought through the technical implementations instead of having a pie-in-the-sky type of design that sounds good on paper, but would be impossible to implement. The work was well-balanced, and Fuzzy Math really focuses on the UX while putting consideration into the technical implementation. I like this about them, and I find it unique. I’ve not found too many service providers who can do a good job of balancing all these elements.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We could have given Fuzzy Math more work if they had excess capacity. They chose to grow at particular and small rates, functioning as a sort of artisanal brewer. I respect this, but it would be nice to give Fuzzy Math more work and have more things occur in parallel. Assembling a larger team would have been nice, but this is less of a criticism and more of a wish.

They do tend to want to do things their way. This isn’t a criticism, but when signing up with them, the best approach is to let Fuzzy Math go through their process. They have a balanced approach and are able to bring all things to the table, which are both strengths. However, there were parts of certain projects where my team tried to bring them in for specific tasks, and Fuzzy Math ended up working below the sum of their parts. They were essentially showing up as a designer, and they probably shouldn’t have performed these tasks. It takes away from their overall packaging, but it’s possible that Fuzzy Math doesn’t offer this anymore.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

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

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. 

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. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Senior Manager of Web Services for a Healthcare Company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

We noticed that our website had been speaking to our audience in a very generic way. The content’s tone was too legal and not resonating with the message we wanted to convey. Our team engaged a firm to research users and use cases. Once we discovered our users’ different personas, we hired Fuzzy Math to redesign our website in collaboration with the in-house development team that I lead. The improved UX design needed to meet the needs of the individual user personas.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Based on the previous research, we had identified our users and the content priority for each type. Fuzzy Math updated the UX design to give our brand a consistent voice while catering to each user persona. The team worked on memory dashboards, claims ordering, ID cards, and search and eligibility verification functionalities. To complete these features, Fuzzy Math wireframed the visual designs and then developed with HTML and CSS to make the site mobile-responsive. The team also helped write content for the entire site.

What’s more, we hope the improved UX will reduce the number of incoming phone calls for enrollments and inquiries. Fuzzy Math is aiming to achieve this result by correcting our bad data. They’re creating calls to action in prominent areas of our website that ask users to update addresses and phone numbers. We’re also collecting contact information as well.

What is the team composition?

The core team, which has lasted throughout the partnership, includes a project manager and about five other people. At the start, we met with the same number of teammates twice per week. We’ve also interfaced with a developer and separate content and UX teams.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

I had worked with them about 10 years ago at a different organization. Due to that prior relationship, I included in this project’s RFP process. A group within our organization evaluated about four different candidate companies during a demo and presentation. We also considered cost and preparedness, among other criteria.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $350,000–$400,00.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2017 and the partnership is ongoing. Fuzzy Math has wrapped up the first statement of work and will proceed with the other SOWs. In addition to HTML and CSS development, they will build additional functionalities including a backend administrative tool. The official launch will be in early 2019 when all the full website and its content are complete.

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

The UX design was responsive and functional across different devices. The redesign also matched our brand as far as readability and utilization of whitespace and color. For example, even the simplest action buttons are consistent in appearance throughout the website. We’ve already received positive feedback from our internal steering committee. Our team can’t wait for the responsive design to go live because 40% of our users already visit us via mobile devices.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

Their organization and workflows are exceptional. We have two phone calls every week or two hours of meetings. They share files via Basecamp and design screens with InVision. We leave comments on the latter to complement communication via phone and email. Occasionally, we use in-person meetings to work through specific issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their core team works closely together and as part of our in-house team. Communication is easy and everyone has a sense of ownership. In an impressive iterative process, the design team has created over 600 pages and received feedback from 15 people for each one. Furthermore, the project manager and senior leadership are always available by phone. That level of accessibility is phenomenal.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve kept better track of progress over time. That issue stemmed from not having proper project management on our side. At this point, I don’t think there’s anything else to improve or change.

Any advice for potential customers?

Clients should work with the same team I have. That group has been fantastic; they’re very detail-oriented. I encourage new customers to form the same kind of relationship we have with Fuzzy Math.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My organization is a nonprofit in the healthcare space. We develop educational content and support programs for people living with chronic disease.

I am the director of technology and data services. My job is to manage all of the technology aspects of the work that we do.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

Fuzzy Math provided UX/UI support for our smartphone app which is focused on data collection from patients.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’d developed the Android- and iOS-compatible app several years prior, and Fuzzy Math went through a design process with us for a new version of the app, which would include added features. The team also conducted user interviews, testing, and market research to get more information about our user base.

From there we had a discovery portion, where we did a full review of the product as it existed. We looked at features, marketing materials, and surveys of existing users. Next was a vision and planning section where Fuzzy Math took their findings from the user research and did some interaction concepting and refinement. They did feature audits as well as UI design.

The UI design portion included information architecture, looking at the visual foundation, navigation, and all of that kind of thing. There were several sprints of wireframes and visual design composition. The final deliverable was like a clickable prototype of the wires, static wireframes for each of the wires, and a production and style guide document.  

That included all of the bits of the user interaction in the app, data visualization, and workflows for existing users, legacy users, and new users.  

What is the team composition?

I work with four people. I work directly with Mark (Co-Founder) on planning and costs. He has several folks on the UX front that I work with, as well as project management, and one or two people that focus on the design.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

We initially found them on Clutch, but we were looking for recommendations from other partners. We did quite a bit of research and wound up finding several candidates for the project.  We set up some interviews with key stakeholders within the organization. 

We compared and contrasted the proposals, competencies, and our confidence in them. In the end, we felt that Fuzzy Math would be the best fit culture-wise, as well as skillset-wise. At the time, we felt it would work well, and at this point, I would say that we made the right decision.

How much have you invested in them?

We have worked on projects ranging from about $80,000–$130,000, as well as some smaller projects that were about $20,000–$25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We brought them on officially in October 2019 for one project. We worked with them in the 1st  quarter of 2020 on another project, and then the 3rd quarter and 4th quarter of 2020.

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

Most of the work we did was for informing internal decision making. However, the work on the app, which is customer-facing, is still in the implementation phase so we don’t have hard metrics in terms of actual app usage. 

What we do have is qualitative information from user interviews with regards to experience with the app versus the concepts that we did. We had some of our user base weigh in on the concepts and the designs; the navigational system, the look and feel, as well as the feature set. The response was overwhelmingly positive from our patient community. It was pretty evident that we were going in the right direction.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

Fuzzy Math does a pretty good job. We haven’t had any issues with delays or costs. We have been on budget for all our projects. 

The team is very good at shifting gears when we need a little bit more time to get feedback internally or are otherwise delayed getting back to them. In those cases, they’ll go work on something else in order to keep the cadence and the project going at a good pace. 

They use Basecamp as a project management tool. For the most part, communication is either through Basecamp or through weekly scheduled meetings. They have always been available to me when I have needed them to. 

As our relationship with Fuzzy Math has matured, it’s continued to be extremely positive. They have become more effective now that they have been able to ingest a lot of our internal business practices, the needs, and all of that kind of thing.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I found Fuzzy Math’s methodology to be very effective. The team was very focused on their process and method during the interviewing process. 

They have a wide range of skills and expertise. They’ve worked in the healthcare space as well as the corporate space. They have data visualization experience, but really where they shined was in the user testing and user interviews. 

For every round of testing and every major feature set and milestone, we made sure that we had actual patients give their input to make it a really user-centered design. The concepting that they came up with all stemmed from the user research that they performed. They weren’t looking to fix a problem that wasn’t there. They were pretty flexible, and they have always been adaptable to any feedback that we have provided.

Fuzzy Math doesn’t rely on thinking or guessing. They actually sought clarifications, feedback, and data from our users in order to inform their choices.   

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t say that I have anything specifically. As we are going along, we are getting more and more effective. I can’t think of any particular downsides. The working relationship has been very positive and congenial, and the work product has been stellar. So far, all the internal stakeholders are very pleased with their work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Prepare for a robust onboarding process. The more you involve them in some of the earlier decision-making processes or the more communication you have, the more effective they are going to be. If you are going to use a firm like Fuzzy Math, the more information you arm them with, the better the outcome will be.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of product development at a medical device startup.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

Since we're a startup, we had zero in-house branding. We needed an outsource team to create an ergonomic, intuitive UI that can be used by different users in different settings. I wanted the UI to be consistent with our branding. We wanted to have something quickly done to go to the tradeshow with it.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We designed the software application with a specific tool in mind that can translate from a Photoshop or Sketch drawing into a usable interface. Fuzzy Math created the UI and image assets for the page. We then imported it into our application and completely restructured the UI. It’s an embedded device that will eventually be a kiosk application.

It’s still running on exclusively on Windows. We program everything in C++ and we’re using a Qt framework for the UI. Fuzzy Math had never worked with Qt, but they quickly adapted to it and learned how to convert their sketch files into metafiles that we could import into the framework.

We also wanted to have a logo and theme for the company. They investigated how we feel about our company and what our brand should represent, formalizing the brand idea and creating a concrete deliverable with branding and style guidelines. They found the right fonts and colors for us.

What is the team composition?

They had several people working on the project. There was a lead UX designer, a secondary UX designer, and a visual designer. The visual designer helped with creating the brand and styles. One of the co-founders acted as a project coordinator. He helped keep the project going and answered questions. I mostly worked with the designers.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

We looked at different large design companies. We found Fuzzy Math through a Google search for a UX designer in Chicago. We had a few calls with them, and we wanted a local company so we could have in-person meetings.

How much have you invested with them?

Overall, we’ve invested $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2019 and the work is ongoing.

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

We’ve finished the initial phase of creating the UI for the tradeshow. We had such a good experience with Fuzzy Math that we want to continue and push this project forward. We’ve asked for their help in finishing the UI and the final product. I told my CEO that they may be the best contractors I’ve worked with.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

They were professional and supported us by working independently when needed. When they needed feedback from us, they asked for it. They kept us on task as well, which was very much appreciated. We had several in-person meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their professionalism was very impressive. We have a very complex workflow, but Fuzzy Math was able to understand the workflow immediately and even make suggestions to improve it. They picked it up very quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I can think of that needs improvement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Trust them. They know what they’re doing. They’re experts in UX design.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of MyTaskit. We are a work coordination software company that provides software as a service options to help companies coordinate daily tasks.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

We ran into design and usability hurdles in a product. We had a particular audience that needed a simpler UI/UX that worked with their level of technological ability. We wanted to strengthen our team and decided to bring in a UI/UX specialist.

What was the scope of their involvement?

For each project, I talk through our high-level needs with their CEO. He makes sure he understands our business needs and scopes out all their services. They refine the requirements, make recommendations, and get up to speed on the application. We give a demo of the application as needed and they interview us and our existing clients to build a case document. We make changes and they build a low-fidelity wireframe. We agree on the functionality and they then work on high-fidelity designs. They’ll then either hand the product over to our developers or collaborate with us to complete the product.

Our most recent project was adding functionality to a scheduling system for human resources. They helped us build a variety of views. A user can look at the scheduling app within our app by day, by week, by month, by asset, by tech, and by customer. It’s a complicated system with a lot of moving parts.

What is the team composition?

I interact directly with their CEO and our product manager works with a point of contact on their team. I am not as involved with the process, so I only interact with a few people on their team.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

A contracted project manager of ours was looking for Chicago-based teams that were local to him. He did all the research and we chose them based on his recommendation. We were so impressed with their initial work with us that we had them build out our new pages and functionality for an application and they became our go-to UI/UX contractor.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together initially in 2014. The most recent project with them began in November 2017 and finished around June 2018.

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

We had two clients who were waiting for us to complete the app before signing on with us. One joined us after we had the low-fidelity wireframes to show them and the other signed on after the high-fidelity capabilities were clear. They committed to us and became the two largest deals of the year.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

We use a tool for project management and use agile and scrum methodology. They enter our scrum processes and become a part of our team. They attend each scrum session as it relates to their work. They have a specific set of skills, and are willing to recommend other companies if our needs don’t fall within their wheelhouse.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I can describe what I’m looking for and they just get it. It doesn’t matter what market we’re in, they understand what we’re after. They ask the right questions and get the answers they need. They grasp the unique requirements of each project and know their project management and UI/UX skillsets. We have our own UI/UX person now, but we still use them to augment our team and they’re very helpful with transitions. I’ve worked with four startups and they are some of the best UI/UX people I’ve ever seen.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the president of an IT technology company that develops custom software systems for the Metals Service Center and manufacturing markets.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

We were working on a project to migrate our main application's Windows GUI to a modern web-based UI. Previously we handled all the UI design work internally; however, moving to a web interface required design skills we didn't have. Our application includes order processing, inventory and warehouse management, and a fully integrated accounting module. These modules encompass hundreds of screens (transaction entry, maintenance, reporting, etc.) that support numerous workflows. We hired Fuzzy Math to help us redesign the UI/UX by building a new UI pattern library and style guide .

What was the scope of their involvement?

Fuzzy Math began the project with a discovery phase. Their team traveled our office to better gauge our design preferences and overall project goals. They visited one of our local customers to observe how users interacted with the current Windows UI. They used this information to develop their design proposals. They used an iterative process to create POC designs, and they validated these designs with our local customer.  

Fuzzy Math created a comprehensive web UI/UX pattern library and style guide. Applying these deliverables to a few of our most heavily used screens, they created a series of templates bringing the patterns together into functional screen designs.

What is the team composition?

My team worked with four Fuzzy Math team members. We collaborated with their project manager and designer on mockups, workflows, and system performance. Another designer worked on the color schemes, high-definition design, and the overall look and feel. A final teammate assembled all of this design work into an interactive pattern library and style guide with detailed CSS and HTML documentation.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

I found Fuzzy Math online when I searched for local UI/UX companies.  I also looked at their review on Clutch. I put a bid out to three different companies before ultimately choosing Fuzzy Math.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent $180,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project spanned May–September 2018.

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

The pattern library enables us to create a consistent user experience. We’ve completed our first user acceptance tests, and feedback has been positive.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

Overall, the project went well. We used Basecamp. A couple of times, we needed to regroup to clear up misunderstood requirements or timelines. Once we had a few conversations, we resolved the issue.

What did you find most impressive about them?

When we began working together, my team knew very little about practicing modern UI/UX techniques. Fuzzy Math took the time to educate us on what they were doing and why. We weren’t accustomed to this process and often wanted to speed it up, but they did a great job managing our expectations so that we didn’t rush the work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The CSS in their final deliverable didn't immediately translate to the web development framework we were using. A more detailed discussion on the technical aspects of the deliverables could have made the handover smoother.  Ultimately, it was a non-issue, and it was quickly resolved.

Any advice for potential customers?

Keep an open mind, be patient, and make sure they can speak to your customers or end users.  For instance, we have a very fast-paced user base. Observing our users helped Fuzzy Math see that some design concepts, such as a scrolling screens, wouldn’t work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the SVP of client solutions at a talent management platform and managed service provider. We help clients manage their contingent and non-full-time employee workforce.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fuzzy Math?

We have a platform that our clients use to manage their non-full-time employees, so contractors, professional services, resources, or people that are assigned or attached to a statement of work. For example, a consulting firm might do some work for an information security project for a client. There are people that are part of that project that belong to the consulting firm, but they’re actually doing work on behalf of the client. We help manage those resources, and our platform basically helps manage the requisition to check process, so identifying and then helping hiring managers hire temporary workers, and also ensuring that they get paid.

We needed to update our platform, and we hired Fuzzy Math to help us understand what the market was looking for. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Fuzzy Math conducted stakeholder and business leader interviews with our client to understand what they were looking for from our technology. Fuzzy Math did a lot of homework to understand what business the client was in and what they were trying to achieve. An impartial third party conducted the interviews based on Fuzzy Math’s knowledge of the space of the industry and their previous work. 

They also provided a series of recommendations that we could leverage as we tried to enhance our overall platform and UX. These recommendations largely derived from the feedback they received in the stakeholder meetings. We sought to make our UX frictionless, and they provided some concrete examples of how end-users of our system thought the application was hard to use. They made a series of recommendations on how to potentially solve for a better experience with those specific examples. The recommendations allowed us to consider how we were going to enhance our platform in future releases. If you’re familiar with the software industry, every platform goes through feature function improvements, and the recommendations that they gave us were focused on what our client wanted to see us do in terms of those improvements.

What is the team composition?

We worked with three folks from their team: Ben (Co-Founder) and then two of his colleagues. What was interesting to me was that there didn’t seem to be a hierarchy; they all rolled up their sleeves and got the work done. They probably received direction from Ben, but I think that given their previous experience, they knew what to do and the types of questions to ask.

How did you come to work with Fuzzy Math?

I’d worked with Fuzzy Math at a previous company that was in the same space and used similar technology. I knew from this experience that they’d provide the feedback we really needed to make improvements to the platform. I needed some additional executive buy-in, so I introduced them to my company’s CIO, and they had a couple of discussions. My executive team and I agreed that this was the right time for the kind of structure, approach, and culture that Fuzzy Math brought to the table in order to get a deliverable that would make sense.

How much have you invested with them?

My company spent around $40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in July or August 2019, and it was a two-month project.

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

The guideposts that we used to measure their impact included how receptive the client and our senior leadership were to them. I shared their report with key leaders at my client, and it was very well-received. We’ve been able to incorporate a lot of their recommendations into the UX development we are doing as part of a feature release. My technical leadership identified 3–4 significant items to incorporate into the platform moving forward. Some of it's been implemented, and some of it is planned and under development.

How did Fuzzy Math perform from a project management standpoint?

Fuzzy Math was fantastic. They communicated often and well. They were very clear about where they were in the project and what was coming up next. We’d agreed to a certain budget, and Ben was able to show me that we were on the right track and that we wouldn’t go over budget. When he ran into issues with the client or someone on our team in terms of scheduling, he was very forthcoming. They were very regimented behind the scenes; whenever I asked questions about timing or cost, they were always on top of it and had the answer. 

They were very open to receiving guidance from me. I let them know what we were trying to accomplish with our platform and with our client, as well as things we’d heard that just didn’t work. The guidance was completely neutral and meant to provide some kind of context as they walked into the meetings. One of the things I really liked about how that team of three worked was that they appreciated my perspective, but they also really dug into the details with the client to get their perspective. That's really why we had hired Fuzzy Math: to go in and find out what the pain points were, validate some things that we knew, and uncover some new things for us to consider. That team of three folks really worked well together. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to find creative solutions in a space that lacks creativity sets them apart. They were able to help us understand where we stood vis-à-vis our competitors, but then they didn’t allow us to settle for good enough. Their combination of creativity and aspirational goals really made the difference for us. As a company, we want to get ahead of the curve, and they gave us the opportunity to see how to do that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so. They were given a lot of loose guidance, and they were able to focus well and get stuff done. They were always very responsive.

Any advice for potential customers?

Provide appropriate context and visibility into the actual client problems, but also allow the Fuzzy Math team to go in and ask the questions that they need to ask. There’s no sense in hiring a company and people of that quality to hamstring them. Let them know what you’re trying to achieve, but ask them to determine whether that’s feasible. Empower them to ask hard questions. I could’ve very easily set an agenda and told them what I wanted them to find, but I allowed them to exercise independence and leverage their market expertise for a better-quality product.