Mind The Gap Studio · Studio Black

Bridging the gap between a bold idea and a shipped AI product.

We're a small, senior studio that designs and ships AI products people can actually use, under the constraints of safety, regulation, and real-world accuracy.

The gap

Most teams have to choose. You shouldn't have to.

When you're building something genuinely hard, you usually get one of two things.

A senior strategist who can't build
Great advice. Can't ship what they recommend.
Builders who don't get the domain
Ship fast. Miss your users, rules, and reality.
Studio Black
Both. We close the gap.
Senior product judgment that also designs and ships the working software.

Both leave a gap, and in complex, regulated products, that gap is where time, budget, and trust quietly disappear. We close it: senior product judgment that also designs and ships the working software.

What we do

Three ways in. One of them ships your product.

We work across three engagements: from a low-commitment first look to designing and shipping the whole product. Most partnerships start small and grow.

Entry · low commitment

AI-UX & Product Audit

A senior teardown of an existing complex product: usability, product strategy, and AI-readiness. We find where AI would help, whether the AI you already have is trustworthy and compliant, and where your privacy and governance gaps are (GDPR, the EU AI Act). The non-commodity UX audit, and a natural on-ramp to deeper work.

The heroOur core

Product Design → Build

Our core. We design and ship complex and AI products end to end, from UX and design system through to a deployed production system, using disciplined, spec-driven AI-agent development. For startups shaping a serious MVP and enterprises taking a prototype to production alike.

UX & design systemSpec-driven AI buildDeployed production system
Secondary

AI Workflows for Teams

Help your organisation adopt agentic AI internally: automation, orchestration, and privacy-first local or self-hosted LLMs, so your team gets the upside without sending data where it shouldn't go.

No packages, no price lists. Every engagement is scoped to the problem. Start with a free intro chat; we follow with a custom quote.

Designing with AI in mind

AI designed in, not bolted on.

Most products now have an AI feature. Far fewer have one people trustenough to use. We've spent 15+ years designing AI and machine-learning interfaces (trading analytics, clinical decision support, in-car voice) where the output has to be interpretable, the human stays in the loop, and "roughly right" isn't good enough.

Interpretable by design
Outputs a domain expert can read, question, and act on.
Human-in-the-loop
The person stays in control; AI proposes, people decide.
Compliant & private by default
GDPR and EU AI Act considered up front, not retrofitted.
Model suggestionreview required
Flagged 3 records likely mis-coded. Recommended reclassification with supporting evidence.
Confidence0.88
Source A · 2024Source B · auditPolicy §4.2
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app.prepmycv.com
PrepMyCV
EU-hosted · BYOK AES-256
AI suggestions
Strengthen impact
Quantify the highlighted line: add a metric.
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Tailor to role
Match 4 keywords from the job description.
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Match score
86/ 100
Proof · PrepMyCV

PrepMyCV tailors your CV to the job, with AI you can trust.

It turns your CV and a target job posting into a tailored, interview-ready application: privacy-first, EU-hosted, your data encrypted with your own key.

We designed and shipped it by directing AI coding agents, the clearest proof of both halves of what we do: AI designed into a product, and AI agents directed to build it.

How it was built
145
API endpoints
23
domains
2
Python ML microservices
AES-256
BYOK encryption
~1,600
commits in ~3 months
Stripe
payments

See it live. We walk you through PrepMyCV on our intro call, the fastest way to see how we design and build.

Track record

Fifteen years in the hard domains.

Before Studio Black, our senior work shaped products in some of the most demanding domains there are, under real safety, regulatory, and scale constraints.

~0.0Mvehicles a year
Global automotive OEM, in-car multimedia

In-car HMI under strict safety and glanceability constraints; connected services and EV navigation; a new pay-per-view revenue stream.

0hospitals, pharma & research
NHS-deployed health platform, clinician-facing

A modular system turning complex clinical pathways into configurable apps, with AI-assisted analytics.

0%accuracy detecting dislocations
ING-backed fintech, AI bond-trading platform

Making machine-learning output interpretable and actionable for portfolio managers and traders.

Named · public
CESOprah · Harrods
WonderWoof, IoT wearable

A fashion-forward connected device. Hardware + app, concept to manufacture.

In-car·Clinical·Trading floor·IoT hardware·Web
We don't specialise in a platform. We specialise in difficulty.

How we work

Senior product thinking, carried all the way to shipped.

We design and ship as one process: product and UX flow straight into a disciplined, AI-accelerated build, with no hand-off and no gap to fall through.

Product / UX
Discover & frame
Strategy
Design
Spec
design → buildable
AI build
Build
Verify & ship
AI speed, without the slop.
Product judgment, start to finish

Research, framing, and UX under real safety and regulatory constraints.

Spec-driven & gated

Written specs and plans before code; a 60+ anti-pattern operating manual and a Definition-of-Done gate before anything merges.

Privacy & compliance by design

GDPR, EU AI Act, bring-your-own-key encryption.

About

A small studio, built for hard problems.

Studio Black is a small, senior, principal-led product studio. You work directly with the people doing the work: 15+ years of product and UX leadership across automotive, healthcare, and fintech, now paired with AI-native building. We're deliberately small: we take on a few hard problems at a time and go deep.

The Mind The Gap Studio family

We're the foundation studio of Mind The Gap Studio. Black is the starting canvas (the blank space every product begins from), and we bring in the colour one piece at a time.

Studio Black
Product & AI builds
Studio White
Creative video
Studio Pink
Music
Final word

Got a hard problem? Let's talk.

If you're building something complex, novel, or regulated, and getting the product right matters, start with a free, no-pressure chat. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right studio for it, and you'll see PrepMyCV live.

We're not the right fit for brochure sites, template builds, or simple ecommerce.