For all of the advances in using technology to address problems found across the spectrum of life experiences, only a small percentage of those technological solutions take on the challenge of addressing the essential nature of communication, something on which all technology depends.

At the Girls in Tech – Amplify Women’s Pitch Night 2016 event in San Francisco, CA, Anna Vital, founder of Adioma, met with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-host of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to talk about the innovative services offered by her company and what provided the inspirations for its ideas.

New infographic forms

Vital began by outlining what exactly Adioma does: “Adioma visualizes your articles. Any text you write, you can upload it, and it will visualize it, into visual language … icons and visual layouts,” built on the familiarity everyone has with iconography of various complexity levels.

While emojis are another popular form of visualization, Vital laughingly pointed out how unsuited they would be to expressing ideas of law or science. Instead, her company and its technology draw on the signs and indicators used by airports, healthcare and traffic signals, among others, to formulate visual translations. “There’s already visual language,” she said. “We’re just expanding it to cover all kinds of meaning, so the whole visual language would cover the whole English language.”

Adioma isn’t restricted to icons, either, as part of its translation work involves universal templates, such as timelines, branching trees and cycles. Entirely algorithm-based in operation, Adioma’s conversion enables a wide range of uses, from someone looking to create an effective sales pitch to a getting a different angle on a brainstorming session. “If you have an article or ideas that you’re brainstorming, you can just write it out, upload it and boom, just like that [it’s visualized for you],” Vital said.

Visual thinking

Vital shared some of the background that had led her to form Adioma, starting with the rough idea while in law school, as her visual learning inclinations came up against the massive amounts of text required for her courses. Having successfully done some visual translation for personal use in that context, she looked to apply visualization to other information but found that there were no ready-made tools.

For a few years, she worked with Photoshop and Illustrator, becoming a designer as she looked for a way to make it easier for everyone, as the cost per project prohibited smaller companies from using her services. Once she had the idea for automation, the path to Adioma was made even clearer.

“Sixty percent of the world is visual thinkers,” Vital stated. “Some of us are not comfortable to admit it, because the text guys are supposed to be smarter, but it’s like, ‘No, everyone is smart. If you’re a visual thinker, you just need the right tools to express yourself and the right tools to consume information.’”

Since its launch in September, the currently three-person company has been a success, with more than 5,000 visualizations created with its platform so far. And it’s already seeing a profit with 10 percent revenue growth from the last month. To Vital, there’s still enormous potential for growth as the service continues covering English and then moves on into the rest of the world’s languages.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Girls in Tech – Amplify Women’s Pitch Night 2016.

*Disclosure: Girls in Tech and other companies sponsor some Girls in Tech – Amplify segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Girls in Tech nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Photo by SiliconANGLE