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UX for AI Visual Search

Challenge

Build intuitive user experiences—while building the team and business—for a sophisticated machine learning platform. The system combined asset management, visual search, and business intelligence, and needed to serve clients ranging from major movie studios to oil and gas enterprises. Our challenge was to make deep ML capabilities usable, intuitive, and valuable for real-world, high-stakes decisions—while also evolving the internal team, culture, and product processes from pre-money startup to venture-backed growth.

Role

EVP of UX & Product: I led product and UX strategy, built the internal design team, and embedded with engineering to map technical capabilities into clear, human-centered interfaces. I directed the full design process—from persona development and user flow mapping to interface prototyping and iterative testing. I introduced UX patterns that made ML outputs understandable and actionable, and aligned product development with user and business needs.

Outcomes

  • Reduced a 27-man-hour film asset search to 3 minutes for a major studio.
  • Increased M&A data coverage from 10% in 3 months to 90% in 1 month for an oil and gas client.
  • Transitioned the platform from cool tech to trusted enterprise tool, dramatically increasing speed, clarity, and decision-making value.
  • Contributed directly to multi-million-dollar wins and helped position the company as a leader in applied ML UX.

Press

Search Widgets for Visual Intelligence

A modular system of widgets enabled users to filter and discover large media archives with precision—by metadata, image similarity, timelines, maps, and more. Designed for speed and clarity, the widgets worked across use cases from film production to government records.

Screenshots of modular search widgets for visual data filtering, including color sliders, facet filters, date pickers, and file-type options used in Zorroa’s interface.



Custom Search Widgets

Annotated UI: From Engineering Prototype to Product Interface

We took a cluttered, developer-built prototype and redesigned it for real users. These screens show the transition to an intuitive, structured layout with better grouping, hierarchy, and affordance.

Annotated screenshot highlighting interface flaws—such as wasted space, duplicated filters, unclear actions, and lack of view control—with handwritten notes in colored markers.
Annotated UI with usability issues
Screenshot of the legacy interface showing a dense layout with minimal visual hierarchy, nested folders, unstyled elements, and timeline data at the bottom.
Original developer-built UI
User Interface showing alternate layout concepts for a view switcher component, with ideas for list vs. thumbnail views and simplified user controls.
Search Widget Concept Sketch
UI detail showing Zorroa’s visual search interface with a “Simple Search” active, and a dropdown of selectable search widgets—Facet, Fine Tune Search, Data Over Time, and others—overlaid on a film frame.
Search Facets in Use

“Amber’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.”
— Dan Wexler, CEO, Zorroa

UI Design

We transformed a technically complex platform into a clean, intuitive interface that made advanced machine learning tools usable across industries. From visual search to asset filtering and batch actions, every screen was purpose-built for clarity, speed, and scale.

Screenshot of Zorroa’s interface with thumbnail image results, filter panels, and metadata tags from a media archive.

Film Studio UI: From 27 Hours to 3 Minutes – Redesigned search UI helped a major studio cut a visual query task from 27 hours to just 3 minutes

Screenshot of Zorroa’s interface with thumbnail image results, filter panels, and metadata tags from an oil and gas archive.

Oil & Gas M&A: 9× Data Coverage in ⅓ the Time – Improved UI enabled 90% data coverage in 1 month (vs 10% in 3 months) for an unstructured asset 

Design System Manager with Full UI Inventory

From foundational elements like color, type, and spacing, to scalable components including personas, widget templates, and configuration panels the Zorroa design system was built for flexibility. The system enabled consistent, cross-team rollout and streamlined product development at scale.

Screenshot of the personas section in the design system, featuring categorized user personas for Zorroa internal users, special projects, and client-facing roles, including thumbnails and names for each.
Screenshot of the widgets documentation showing visual specs for range, multipage, and facet widgets—including thumbnails, labels, and different UI states for each widget type.
Screenshot of a design system showing UI components, color palette, spacing tokens, and layout templates used in Zorroa’s platform.
Screenshot of the Zorroa Design System Manager dashboard showing UI categories like components, colors, personas, and widgets, with a welcome message and visual tiles for each system section.

Contextual Search for Film and Media

Demonstrating how our system helped creative teams and archivists find exact frames, scenes, or patterns across massive datasets.

Workflow showing Alex using facet widgets in Zorroa to filter Disney animation assets by show name, character, artist, and element type; results are added to a collection for review or download.
Facet Filtering for Animation Archives
Step-by-step flow of Karen requesting high-res exports with watermarks due to restricted access, while Alex—an admin—reviews and exports the assets without watermark using Zorroa’s export tools.
Permission-Based Export Requests
Jean uses Zorroa’s similarity widget to search for broken aircraft parts using an uploaded photo, returning visual matches to support part identification and repair documentation.
Reverse Image Search for Aircraft Parts
Jeremy verifies metadata in Adobe Premiere using Zorroa’s system that imports assets, detects duplicates via ML, tunes results, merges metadata, and exports a clean master record.
Merge Duplicates into a Single Source of Truth

Shared UX Language for Cross-Team Alignment

By defining and labeling the distinct areas of the user interface interface we created a shared vocabulary for product, design, and engineering. By codifying UI regions and component names, we streamlined communication, reduced ambiguity, and improved collaboration across the team.

Diagram evaluating menu options, hierarchy, and visibility, with notes on accessibility, disabled states, and team confusion around excess configurability.
Menu System Audit
Layered annotations on a legacy UI highlighting how different controls map to user flows and menu structures—created to guide developers and clarify intent during implementation.
Interaction Mapping Overlays
Annotated screenshot labeling major UI zones such as filters, metadata panel, timeline, and thumbnail grid—used to standardize language across product, design, and engineering teams.
Interface Region Labels
Screenshot showing alternative UI layouts for switching between list and thumbnail views, used to align interaction expectations across stakeholders.
View Switcher Concepts

User Personas

We developed detailed personas to represent key user types—such as developers and network engineers—capturing their goals, technical skills, and usage patterns. These personas guided our design decisions, ensuring the platform met actual user needs and facilitated effective cross-team communication.

Headshot and persona card for José, a developer and data scientist. Includes key tasks, personality traits, and a quote: “I help tailor algorithms and develop custom plugins to leverage the unique assets of each client.”
Headshot and persona card for Jason, a network operations engineer. Includes job responsibilities, goals, and a quote: “I make sure every computer system in my company is running at peak performance. Please don’t mess with my machines.”

User Journeys as a Strategic Design Tool

We used journey maps not just for feature design, but as a core tool for solving product-wide challenges. They helped us prioritize user needs, guide feature rollouts, and refine how we approached development.

Chart visualizing different personas moving through feature development stages. Maps each user’s path from initial need to post-release adoption, used to guide feature rollout strategy and UX refinement.
A horizontal journey map illustrating user touchpoints, actions, and emotional highs/lows over time. Shows how users interact with the product from login through task completion, highlighting friction points and design opportunities.

Cross-Team Alignment on Roadmap & Delivery

We used Gantt charts to align design, product, and engineering across shared timelines. They clarified responsibilities, tracked progress, and kept complex, multi-team workstreams moving forward.

A color-coded Gantt chart showing cross-functional timelines for design, product, and engineering teams. Includes phases like research, design, development, and QA—used to align deliverables and track progress across multiple stakeholders.

Team building and product building


I began working with Zorroa as a consultant, and after a little over a year, I joined full-time as EVP of UX and Product. In addition to leading product and UX, I helped build and scale the internal team. You can read more about that in Creative Leadership and Design Operations. While at Zorroa, I was honored with a 40 Under 40 Award and contributed to several patents—more on that is on the About Me page.

Three photos from Zorroa’s time based in Oakland: (1) a group of seven women smiling inside the office—Amber Sawaya, second from left, with pink hair; (2) two teammates standing outside at night looking up at the lit Tribune Tower; (3) a daylight view of the Bay Area with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, seen from the Presidio.
Snapshots from Zorroa’s Oakland Era, Amber Sawaya is second from left with the pink hair.

“Our experience with working with Amber is outstanding—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. She is a complete joy to work with.”
— Elizabeth Luffy, Executive Chair, Zorroa

Due to confidentiality agreements, only selected portions of my work are shown here. 
I’d be happy to walk you through more details in person or over a call.