DATE:
2021
ROLE:
VISUAL DESIGNER
COMPANY:
IBM
2021
ROLE:
VISUAL DESIGNER
COMPANY:
IBM
IBM WATSON DISCOVERY:
ENTITY EXTRACTOR TOOL
Watson Discovery uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to make sense of unstructured data (ex. business reports, manuals, etc.) that contain a mix of texts, images, tables, and graphs. The Entity Extractor tool allows users to highlight words and phrases to train a machine language model to extract terms related to entity types (ex. organizations, locations, proper names, etc.) from a large corpus of documents.
As the visual designer on the Watson Discovery team, I designed a layout for the Entity Extractor workflow, leveraging IBM's design language to develop the visual style of the page. Deliverables included: custom accessibility-focused UI components for an annotation system, interactive prototypes to communicate interactions and user flows, and foundational Carbon Design System components and patterns applied throughout the user workflow. A beta version of the tool was released in November 2021.
Initially, our process involved applying Carbon components to the workflow. However, we encountered challenges due to the lack of predefined Carbon guidelines for annotations.
To address the absence of Carbon annotation guidelines, I researched existing annotation and highlighting tools, focusing on accessibility considerations. I also reviewed similar annotation interfaces within IBM’s product portfolio, discovering a tool from another Watson product that served as a foundation for new components. Additionally, I worked with the accessibility team to confirm that the introduced components complied with accessibility standards and that the patterns felt intuitive within the workflow. These components were updated to meet the specific accessibility and usability needs of our project.
