Amazon Mechanical Turk

User experience and interface design for one of the largest crowdsourcing platforms

Millions of people use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mTurk) program to leverage human computation for tasks that cannot be reasonably handled by normal computer cycles. From missing person searches, to aggregating data for academic research, to film and medical transcription and beyond, mTurk brings the workplace to a new global frontier.

The mTurk team at Amazon knew they already had a revolutionary product but wanted to rework the architecture and interface to make it more intuitive for their users. They came to Intridea to help them optimize the user experience for both new and existing users in the system.

Intridea started by gaining a mental model of the system and then identified areas we could refine user flow issues and design elements. We then developed a new structure for the application and a visualization for how it would all come together.

Only a truly agile design and development process that minimized disruption to mTurk is appropriate for a product used by millions of people. Intridea suggested smart, incremental changes, got those changes in front of the mTurk team, processed their feedback, and then iterated based on that feedback.

The result? A more simple and usable system, one that constantly evolves to match the needs of its dynamic user base. Amazon mTurk continues to redefine the ways in which humans and computers get things done.

Process

We started by gaining a mental model of the system and then identified areas we could refine user flow issues and design elements

Screenshot: Application Blueprint

Process

We then developed a new structure for the application and a visualization for how it would all come together.

Screenshot: Application Blueprint

Process

The result? A more simple and usable system, one that constantly evolves to match the needs of its dynamic user base.

Screenshot: Application

Intridea started by gaining a mental model of the system and then identified areas we could refine user flow issues and design elements. We then developed a new structure for the application and a visualization for

Only a truly agile design and development process that minimized disruption to Mechanical Turk is appropriate for a product used by millions of people. Intridea suggested smart, incremental changes, got those changes in front of the Mechanical Turk team, processed their feedback, and then iterated based on that feedback.

The result? A more simple and usable system, one that constantly evolves to match the needs of its dynamic user base. Amazon Mechanical Turk continues to redefine the ways in which humans and computers get things done.