AI Consulting

An AI consultant helps you decide where AI is worth using, then gets it built and adopted. The Datalabs Agency does this end to end: we work out the decision the tool must support, design the interface, build the software, set up the governance around it and train your team to run it.

AI governance is the set of checks that decide what an AI tool may do, who reviews its answers and how problems are caught. The Datalabs Agency sets it up in three working exercises from its Visualize. Decide. Explain. workbook: map your governance checkpoints, identify and prioritise AI risks, and design your statements of AI transparency. The output is a governance flow diagram, a risk heatmap and a prototype leaders can sign off. Get the free workbook.

Explainable AI means a person can see how an answer was reached. In reporting that matters because leaders and regulators need to trust a number before they act on it. We design the interface so the source, the comparison and the reasoning are visible next to the answer. Read What is Explainable AI (XAI)? or see our explainable AI case study.

The Datalabs Agency uses a seven-point Explainers’ Checklist, from its Visualize. Decide. Explain. workbook:

1. Start with the outcome: what was predicted, and was it approved, denied or scored.
2. Show which features mattered most: the top three to five, with colour for what helped and what hurt.
3. Explain local and global: why this one decision happened, and what matters across all cases.
4. Interpret the direction of influence: did each feature push the decision up or down, in plain words.
5. Contextualise the confidence: how sure the model was, and whether the reasoning fits your business rules.
6. Spot risk and bias indicators: check whether age, gender or postcode have unexpected influence.
7. Translate into action: what a person can now approve, escalate or investigate.

Get the free workbook.

Use step six of the Explainers’ Checklist: check whether sensitive attributes such as age, gender or postcode have unexpected influence on the result, and whether the pattern points to bias that needs review. Show each feature’s influence on one chart, flag anything that needs a human decision, and record the review. The Datalabs Agency teaches this in its Designing Explainable Decisions with AI workshop and free workbook.

SHAP shares credit for a prediction across every feature, using a fair-share idea from game theory, so it gives a consistent view of one decision and of the whole model. LIME zooms in on a single prediction and builds a small nearby model to show which features mattered. Use SHAP when you need consistency across all cases and LIME for a quick explanation of one decision. Both can be drawn as bar, waterfall, force or beeswarm charts, and our free workbook shows how.

A project manager runs four stages: brief, prototype, build and hand over. Each stage ends with something you can review and sign off, you see a working prototype before the full build, and your team is trained to run the tool at the end.

AI can draft commentary, generate first-pass charts and answer questions about your data, but it still needs a designer and a reviewer. The Datalabs Agency builds AI dashboards and AI reporting where a person checks the output and every figure traces back to its source.

An AI project is a tool or interface that uses AI to help people analyse, decide or create. Examples are an internal assistant for your analysts, a calculator your customers use, or AI-assisted reporting. We design it so the people using it can read it and trust it.

Internal tools for your teams, external tools and interfaces for your customers, AI-assisted analysis through our Insights-as-a-Service process, and explainable AI visuals for governance and transparency.

We run a design process built around people: designers with more than ten years of dashboard experience, and project managers who run every engagement. We use AI inside that process, for analysis, visualization and storytelling, to move faster. Otto Ottinger builds with Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, for analysis, code and drafting. What the data says, and how it looks, stays with our team, and a designer checks everything before it reaches you.

Yes. Our clients work in Tableau, Power BI and Excel, and we design AI-assisted tools around the way your teams already work.

Yes. See the Transurban road usage calculator and our SEEK interactive data microsite case studies.

Yes. Our Designing Explainable Decisions with AI workshop and our design work turn AI-assisted decisions into clear, transparency-ready visuals. We also teach your team to use AI in their own analysis, dashboard design and presentations.

Yes. Our Visualize! generative AI workshop and our data visualization workshops teach teams to use AI in analysis, dashboard design and presentations. Private workshops start from about $300 per person for a team of 12 (AUD, GST included).

Every project is scoped to your brief and quoted as a fixed price once we understand it. Ask for a quote with a short description of what you want to build.

The Datalabs Agency starts with one decision your people make often and are poorly served on today: a weekly report that takes days to assemble, a number leaders do not trust, a question nobody can answer without an analyst. We agree how you will know it worked, such as hours saved, faster decisions or fewer disputed numbers, before anything is built. We then build a working prototype first, so you see the value before you commit to the full build. Projects with no named decision or user tend to stall.

Most projects need three roles: a business owner who knows the decision, someone who designs and builds the tool, and someone who keeps it running afterwards. The Datalabs Agency builds the software for data visualization and reporting with AI, leads the strategy where AI, design and storytelling all matter, and trains your analysts to run and extend the tool so you are not tied to us. You bring the business owner and a person who knows the data. Ask for a quote and we will say which roles you already have.

Yes. We are based in Melbourne and have worked with teams in the United States, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, Kazakhstan, the UK, Belgium, Qatar and the UAE. Projects run remotely or on site.

Otto Ottinger is the founder and Managing Director of The Datalabs Agency. He worked at National Geographic before founding the agency, and he leads the workshops himself. Read more about Otto Ottinger.