Invent and Simplify Flashcards
QUESTION: What’s the most innovative new idea that you have implemented?
Title: Veritone Voice
Situation:
Over the last 3 years I have a growing relationship with Alexa (in the most platonic way)
Working at a progressive SaaS AI company its important to keep a pulse on burgeoning technologies
Identified an opportunity to enhance how the “aircheck” use case and integrate voice-enabled technology into the company’s flagship application
Suboptimal text-based experience requiring users to input search, then apply filters
Obstacle/Task:
Led effort to integrate a voice-first experience around the use case of an “aircheck” that used Veritone’s AI services for NLP and computer vision (transcription, logo, face, OCR) and supported various modalities to interface with the application
Action:
Reviewed in-app chat support data; 2 out of 5 inbound support requests were related to challenges performing an “aircheck”
Mined search query data from elastic and chat support info to understand the roundtrip time for “airchecks” via text-based search
Measured avg. duration for users to perform aircheck via keyboard (type query, apply filters by date, station, etc.)
Avg. roundtrip time was appx. 30 seconds
Presented a data-supported proposal to integrate voice technologies
Partnered with a third-party with voice domain experience to help with build out
Determined the form factors/modalities to use and designed an experience for each scenario
w/o screen
w/ screen
device to app
browser supported web app
Set goals and KPIs to enable users to perform airchecks faster (sub 30 seconds) than using keyboard
Challenges:
Learning to think with a voice-first mentality
Ongoing model tuning to account for mishandled voice requests
Being voice agnostic with Amazon and Google
Supporting user experience with or without screens
Scaling search beyond text (find faces, logos, pictures, videos)
Incorporating system filters in a voice friendly manner
Returning API response in sub 8 seconds to met Amazon’s acceptance criteria
Results:
Reinvited how to perform an “aircheck” by creating a voice-forward experience using 4 modalities (no screen, screen, device + web, and web only)
Disintermediate device dependency by tying into the browser’s Web Speech API and renders the results within the application
Users could complete a voice-based aircheck end-to-end in less than 7 seconds
Internal adoption as a preferred method to search
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Invent & Simply
Deep Dive
QUESTION: Tell me about a time when you gave a simple solution to a complex problem.
Title: How do I see my creative ads
Situation:
Application designed to reveal insights and optimization needs
Adopted a good, better and best mentality after years of working with devs
The ‘Creative’ section is intend to breakout unique pieces of creative by:
Creative name
Duration
Type (pre-record vs. live)
Station
However, two different approaches could yield the same outcome depending on setup
Obstacle/Task:
Compared user trade-offs, setup difficulty and speed to objective
Action:
1) Search query needs to target each distinct creative (GOOD)
Requires search upkeep (new creatives must be added)
Must have working knowledge of creative naming convention
‘CONTAINS’ operator is inclusive of root search term
Heavy end user lift; taxing and arduous
2) Cross-reference mapping that supports search by ‘advertiser’ and points to the creative field (BETTER)
Administrative setup that specifies which schema field houses creative
Sometimes creative are trafficked in other schema fields which wouldn’t pull in advertiser-to-creative cross-reference
Easy one-time admin setup enabling all users to target an advertiser and effectively pull in each unique creative
Worked with Design to create high fidelity mocks of both scenarios
A/B tested with customer input
Results:
Good, better, best mindset (Best would be if the system could infer through data on behalf of the user)
Results and feedback showed that everyone favored the second approach due to easy of setup and effectiveness at pulling in unique creative
Users who tested advertiser targeting reported 5/5 for ease of use vs. targeting creative scored 2/5 for ease of use
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Customer obsession. Working backwards from objective.
Learn and be curious. Strive for improvement. Explore new possibilities
QUESTION (2nd): Tell me about a time when you gave a simple solution to a complex problem.
Title: I’m Sorry Attribute Round Table
Situation:
Application has deep dependencies on platform
Responsible for data ingestion, storage, eventing, correlation and indexing
Numerous components involve and failures across the pipeline were not uncommon
Failures results in count discrepancies diminishing product value (customer sent 10 records, my product showed 7)
Experienced customer complaints and confusion regarding discrepancies
Vulnerable Sales and Success teams forced to handle upset customer and product problems
Morale was low and teams were frustrated and fatigued from on-going problems
Obstacle/Task:
Platform team prioritized building a new framework and didn’t want to invest in fixing the existing pipeline issues
2 non-converting trials and 2 customers cancellations citing data inaccuracies and quality concerns resulting in lost revenue
Action:
Deep apology to cross-functional team during time of crisis (sales, product marketing, customer success, stakeholders)
Pitched a “recovery plan” to executives necessary to rightsize the issue
Diagram process flow and components prone to failure (adapter > api > engine/eventing > index > engine > app)
Components were absent of retry logic; implemented exponential backoff up to 3 max for system resiliency
Stood up dashboards for monitoring data flow and alerting of failures
Deployed a post-process reconciliation service that addresses hourly failures
Results:
Reduced errors from 23% to 12% retry logic
Removed two unnecessary services (Eventing and Indexing)
Improved customer satisfaction and avoided discrepancy related cancellations
Alleviated stress points on sales and support teams
Restored team and customer confidence in product
Enabled platform team to focus on new framework in order for better system reliability
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Invent & simplify
Earn Trust
Insist on high standards
QUESTION (3rd): Tell me about a time when you gave a simple solution to a complex problem.
Title: WideOrbit Bookends (TODO)
