Otera AI
Designing the trust layer for enterprise AI,
so people could check, correct and teach the model.
- #AIandAgentics
- #SaaS
Otera (previously DeepOpinion) is a fast-growing Series A enterprise SaaS scale-up in IDP (Intelligent Document Processing) and Generative Automation, providing state-of-the-art in-house models and LLM-based automation.
View Otera website (opens in a new tab)- Role
- Senior Product and Design Manager (Core team)
- Team size
- 2 PD and 1 PM
- Timeline
- 2023 to 2025
- Platform
- Web
Overview
Product
Built a generative automation and intelligent document processing platform with the team, streamlining enterprise back-office processes and boosting productivity by automating repetitive tasks and integrating seamlessly with existing tools and workflows. The solution reduced operational costs, minimized errors, and improved overall efficiency, enabling businesses to focus on higher-value activities and better serve their customers.
What I did
- Established a cohesive design system.
- Established comprehensive design discipline including workflow, process...
- Conducted user research, analysis, and root cause analysis to identify user problems.
- Mapped user journeys, defined workflows, and collaborated with Trio to ideate solutions.
- Designed wireframes and low-fi prototypes, ran user tests, and iterated based on feedback.
- Led design and product initiatives to introduce zero-shot and few-shot models as a node and AI skill.
- Led design and product initiatives to introduce AI Coworker, Post processing and HITL.
Tools and technologies
Product and design stack
Figma, Jira, Notion, HTML, CSS, React (TypeScript), Storybook.
Tech stack
Python (FastAPI), Autotransformer (in-house model), PostgreSQL, Pinecone, GCP, LangChain, Tensorflow, GPT-4.5, Redis, Google OCR, Github, OKTA, n8n.
Primary user group persona
Aksha
Automation Developer
- Location
- Berlin
- Tech proficiency
- Moderate
Goal
- To automate manual time-taking processes for other departments.
- Performance: Easily build AI with human-level accuracy, with less data.
- To cut the time and increase efficiency within the BU processes.
Challenges
- Time: To get production ready ASAP.
- Reliability: To rely on the accuracy.
- Monitor the process status and outcomes.
“I need to help other departments to automate their manual processes.”
Aksha has a basic understanding of scripting languages like R and Python and brings years of experience using enterprise software. While he admires technology, he lacks the expertise to develop software independently. His approach is results-driven, with a strong emphasis on functionality and practical outcomes.
Process
Our process
At DeepOpinion, we adapted the double-diamond product design process. It looks something like this:
Our non-linear process reality
In reality, sometimes our process looks more like this though.
Design system development process
Feature design discovery process
User journey map
We craft seamless user journeys by analyzing goals, optimizing interactions, and aligning workflows with user needs, ensuring efficiency and impact.
User research synthesis
To identify our users' challenges, we initiate in-depth user research phases. This involved engaging with our customer base through interviews, and feedback sessions.
Usability tests
We conduct rigorous usability testing sessions to gather valuable insights and feedback from users, ensuring that the final product meets their needs and preferences while optimizing overall user experience.
SUS
Within the discovery phase, we conducted SUS (System Usability Scale) assessments by presenting users with interactive prototypes. This allowed us to gauge their ease of use, identify pain points, and gather actionable feedback to refine the design and enhance overall usability.
Feature: HITL (Human-in-the-loop)
Problem
User pain point
Users struggle to efficiently customize data processing workflows, facing challenges in adjusting pre-processing labels and defining the desired output, due to complex interfaces or the need for technical expertise.
Discovery process
Method
Double Diamond. Rapid prototyping. Quantitative and qualitative research.
Interviews
Conducted interviews with 12 frequent users to uncover frustrations and preferences.
Behavioral data
Analyzed behavioral data to identify bottlenecks in the current flow.
Competitors
Researched competitors to identify best practices.
What we learned
Users don't distrust the model's accuracy so much as they distrust having no say in it. Across 12 interviews and behavioral analysis, the same theme surfaced from different angles: the system asked people to accept outputs they couldn't inspect, correct, or improve.
No way to verify.
Users felt uneasy relying entirely on the system with no mechanism to review or validate what it produced.
Errors were frequent and invisible.
75% reported recurring inaccuracies, especially in complex and edge-case documents — and with no error indicators or confidence signals, they couldn't tell which outputs needed a second look. The result was blanket manual rework.
Corrections went nowhere.
Fixing the same mistake repeatedly, with no path to feed corrections back into the model, left participants feeling disempowered.
The data model didn't match the work.
Users needed to process line items and line hierarchies, not just flat fields.
Goal
Enable users to easily review, adjust, and approve model output.
Put the human back in the loop: give users a way to review, correct, and teach the system — without needing technical expertise.
Specifically, design an interface that surfaces model confidence and flags likely errors so review effort goes where it's needed, lets users adjust pre-processing labels and define desired output directly, supports line-item and hierarchical extraction, and turns every manual correction into a signal that improves future performance.
Designs and Prototyping
We came to ideation and validation of two major features to follow one another. First was HITL and second was post-processing.
I rapid-prototyped findings in Figma and put clickable versions in front of users across several rounds, testing with real documents rather than sample data. Early rounds showed the confidence indicators worked but the label setup table didn't, users couldn't tell which fields were required or how nesting behaved so we reworked the hierarchy affordances and added inline instructions. Later rounds validated the core loop: participants could review, correct, and approve output on their own, and the corrections they made fed back as training signal, which was the point.
Design centered on one screen: the document on the left, the model's extracted output on the right, so every value could be checked against its source without leaving the page. Confidence scores sit next to each field and drive a color-coded scale, turning review from a full read-through into a triage — low-confidence fields pull attention first, everything else can be skimmed. A pending/completed queue tracks progress across long batches, and the label configuration moved into a plain table where users define fields, parents, data types, formats, and whether a value repeats — enough structure to support line items and nested hierarchies without exposing anything model-shaped. Alongside the happy path, we prototyped the failure states: what a flagged error looks like, who it gets assigned to, and how it's communicated back to the user.
Impact and Lessons
Impact
HITL shipped as the trust layer on top of DeepOpinion's document processing — and trust turned out to be the thing standing between the product and adoption. Users in high-consequence settings stopped treating model output as something to accept or redo wholesale, and started treating it as a draft they could verify in seconds.
What made the difference
Visual confidence scoring
Review effort goes where the model is uncertain, not everywhere.
Split-screen validation
Extracted data sits beside the source document, so verification is a glance rather than a hunt.
Hierarchical labeling and line-item validation
The structure finally matches how invoices and contracts actually work, down to nested line properties.
Dynamic label editing
Users adjust label properties and hierarchies themselves, in real time, without technical help.
Feedback loops
Every correction becomes training signal, so the system gets measurably better at the documents each customer actually processes.
40%
Increase in MRR after HITL shipped
The result: a 40% increase in MRR. Higher confidence drove adoption; adoption drove expansion. Review time per document dropped, blanket manual rework largely disappeared, and the accuracy gains compounded as corrections fed back into the model.
Other Product Features
AI Coworker
84% Engagement
Goal: Empower users with an AI Copilot to streamline document processing, enabling seamless customization and automation for precise outcomes.
Pre-processing
92% Engagement, 10% Churn Reduction
Goal: Enable users to adjust preprocessing labels and define desired outcomes for inference.