Amazon Web Services - Textract

Objective

Amazon needed a sales demo for one of their AWS business services called Textract. This tool allows users to extract text from scanned documents and use this data to plug into their business processes. This tool is special because it extracts documents with table and cell data intact and also allows users to search across a bundle of documents. We needed to communicate the value and ease of these specific features in a simple and intuitive demo tool.

Our Approach

This project had a small budget and relatively clear ask, so the clients did not include a user research phase. After two client interviews, I had a whiteboarding brainstorm session with the developers to create a high level user flow. The initial flow was made over a google hangout; I sketched on the whiteboard while the developer shared insights on how to best build it.

From whiteboards to deliverables

My whiteboard sessions are generally fast-paced and not always the prettiest looking sketches. Before we shared our thoughts with the client, I took the ideas from the session and created this cleaned up document.

A pivot

After the first round of wireframes, we realized there was a lack of alignment within the client team. While we initially were asked to make a simulation of the actual UI flow, later discussions directed to the work to a more simplified demo. The new direction simply put the three features (search, redactions and workflow automation) on the homepage as paths that could quickly demonstrate the way the tool worked.

Wireframes

Our final approach led to a clear and simple homepage that gave sales people and potential customers to get demonstrations of the features that most interested them.

Control & Compliance Flow

This feature is primarily about redacting words (ie last names) and key values (ie social security numbers) from documents, which is a critical part of automating business processes. These screens show the demo walked users through this flow.

Search & Discovery Flow

This flow was designed to illustrate how easy it was for users to search across a set of extracted documents.

Workflow Automation

This screen demonstrated how Textract could be linked to databases to automate workflow processes. From a dev and client perspective, this was this too complex to build out, so we added buttons for Export and Translation that sales people could use as talking points.