Umami
Umami
A mood board feedback tool built for people who do not speak designer.
Mood boards are useful. They are also a little chaotic.
For years, our process looked pretty familiar: build a FigJam board, drop in a bunch of visual references, walk the client through the thinking, then wait for feedback.
Sometimes that feedback was great.
Sometimes it was:
“I like this one.”
“I don’t like this one.”
“This feels cool.”
“Can it be more… premium?”
Helpful? Sort of. Clear? Not always.
The problem was not that clients were bad at giving feedback. The problem was that most mood board tools leave feedback way too open-ended. Every client has a different communication style, a different design vocabulary, and a different comfort level when talking about visuals.
So we built Umami.
A simple internal tool that helps us turn subjective visual feedback into something more structured, more useful, and honestly, way less painful.
The Problem
Traditional mood boards are great for gathering inspiration, but they are not always great at gathering clear feedback.
We found ourselves running into the same issues:
Clients would respond differently depending on how comfortable they were with design language.
Some feedback was too vague to act on.
Some people focused on color, others focused on imagery, others just went with gut feeling.
We would often go back into the board later trying to hunt down one comment, one image, or one tiny clue about what the client meant.
Then came the harder part: turning all that scattered feedback into a clear design direction.
That is where things got messy.
The Idea
We wanted to build a better way to ask for feedback.
Instead of handing someone a giant mood board and saying, “What do you think?” Umami guides them through a focused visual experience.
Think of it like a tiny design dating app.
One image at a time.
Like it or dislike it.
Tell us why.
Move on.
But under the hood, we can ask for the feedback we actually need.
Does the client respond to the typography?
The color?
The composition?
The mood?
The level of restraint?
The weirdness?
The polish?
The energy?
That kind of feedback gives us something much more useful than a thumbs-up and a shrug.
How It Works
We create different visual directions inside Umami, then load each direction with carefully selected reference images.
The client moves through the images one by one and gives feedback in a more focused way.
They can respond to each image based on things like:
Type
Color
Composition
Mood
Style
Feeling
Overall direction
From there, Umami gives us a clearer view of what is working, what is not, and where patterns are starting to form.
Instead of a scattered comment thread, we get a more readable spread of reactions, notes, likes, dislikes, and recurring themes.
It helps us see the shape of the feedback faster.
Why We Built It
At Anchovies, we are always trying to protect the quality of the creative process.
That does not mean making things more complicated. Usually, it means making things simpler.
Umami helps us create a better feedback loop between our team and the client. It gives clients an easier way to respond to visual work, and it gives our designers a clearer way to interpret what those responses mean.
It also helps remove some of the awkwardness from early creative direction.
Clients do not have to know the perfect design word. They just have to react honestly, and Umami helps us translate those reactions into something we can use.
The Bigger Opportunity
The tool is simple right now, but that is kind of the point.
Over time, Umami could become a visual repository for our studio. A place where we store image sets, reuse strong creative directions, and build mood boards faster based on previous patterns.
If we know a certain set of visuals helped define a specific kind of brand direction, we can bring that thinking back later in a more dynamic way.
So Umami is not just a feedback tool. It is the beginning of a smarter creative library.
A way to make taste, instinct, and client reaction easier to organize.
What We Learned
Good feedback usually needs a little structure.
When you give people a huge open canvas, the responses can be all over the place. When you guide the experience, people get more specific. They start noticing what they are responding to. They become better collaborators.
And for us, that means less guessing.
More clarity.
Better creative alignment.
Faster pattern recognition.
Fewer “wait, where did they say that?” moments.
A small tool, yes. But a really useful one.
The Result
Umami has already helped us make the mood board process feel sharper, faster, and more intentional.
Clients get a fun, low-pressure way to react to creative directions. Designers get clearer inputs. Creative directors get a better read on where the energy is.
Everybody wins.
Which is usually a good sign that the tool should exist.