Workbench

Backstory

Litigation document production companies had an array of choices when it came to scanning tools. Often, the document management database software used by the litigation teams had a scanning tool. There were also custom tools such as Adobe Capture and Input Accel that required experienced consultants to install and configure.

Problem

There was no tool or process designed specifically for large volume litigation document production. Scanning tools used conventions and methods foreign to professional document operators. For example, document hierarchies were displayed as trees when operators were used to looking at a stack of documents in an open box. The keyboard and mouse were required to use the software while operators were used to touch screens and a big green button.

Solution

Since our overarching intention was to base our design on how our operators worked we used the copier as our starting point. We retrofitted the standard copier with a touch screen computer and built a scanning interface that worked similarly to how copiers worked. This allowed us to eliminate the separate preparation step and the use of document-grouping patch pages by adding those options to the screen. The document tree was replaced by a stacked display with document groups matching the colors of the patch pages the operators had become used to. The interface displayed only the document groupings assigned to the job, and detailed instructions were available through the interface. Operators were able to work in the way they knew best.