Sana Labs

Sana Labs is building the world's first artificial intelligence teacher to make personalized education accessible to everyone.

Challenge

I was asked to come up with what Sana could look like and how she might teach and interact with people on a more personal level. Joel, the founder was looking to create a demo application involving geometry so that he could show the product easily to investors and engineers.

Solution

The animations helped visualize how the app responds and what it would be like to interact with it. With these demos, Joel was able to successfully raise further investment to launch his company.

Approach

Initially Joel wanted to flush out 13 math courses to show what Sana could be like, but we eventually determined that this was a bit ambitious and unnecessary, as we could effectively communicate what we needed to show within three courses. This allowed me to focus more time and effort on those three to make them top shelf. Less is often more, particularly in this case, and we were able to get incredible results in the allocated timeframe.

Given the scope of the project, we brought on motion graphics designer Justin Lawes to help design and animate the three math course, each written by Abigail Pillitteri. It was incredible working directly with Joel, as he not only deeply cares about the idea, but was also very involved through the entire process. Additionally, he trusted my design instincts and provided for a good, collaborative environment.

We also explored how other details worked like the menus, buttons and how Sana, the teacher’s voice, is visualized. These animations show the animation language for the interactive parts.

We also innovatively used color and icons (see interact video below) to help the user visualize mathematical relationships between objects. We also used examples that relate to the real world, which not only helps retain the information better, but also gives a sense as to how it is applied in actual scenarios.

Voice

Interact