2023 Amazon Summer Design Internship

During the summer of 2023, I had the privilege of working as a UX Design Intern for the Alexa Shopping team at Amazon HQ in Seattle, WA. Over the course of 12 weeks, I had the opportunity to work on several different projects, collaborating with UX researchers, GUI designers, and VUI designers to enhance and reimagine various shopping experiences for customers on Amazon’s multimodal devices.

Here, I'd like to share some of the highlights and key takeaways from my three-month journey.

In the course of 12 weeks...

I dove into a number of projects and accomplished significant milestones, including:

• Owning the redesign and delivery of Amazon’s product variation feature for the Echo Show Family to enhance the current product variation selection experience (aimed to launch by Q4 of 2023)
• Collaborating effectively within a team of four designers to reimagine the information architecture, GUI, and VUI for the product details page on Echo Family devices
• Conducting comprehensive audits of current shopping and purchase experiences on the Echo Family devices to identify inconsistencies and opportunities for improvement
• Spearheading both unmoderated and moderated user testing efforts to gather feedback and insights, as well as guide future design direction and strategy
• Effectively communicating the customer experience to key stakeholders, leadership, and user testing participants, utilizing Figma and Adobe Premiere Pro to create prototypes that highlight both VUI and GUI
• Engaging in future-state thinking after completing assigned deliverables for Amazon’s product variation feature to continue striving for the ideal customer experience, unburdened by existing constraints

Key Takeaways

Embracing ambiguity as an opportunity

Throughout this internship, I’ve learned to navigate large amounts of ambiguity and constantly adapt to changes in requirements and scope. While I initially found it challenging to deal with, I ultimately realized the importance of embracing ambiguity as an opportunity to explore new ideas and challenge preconceived notions. When given just a scope and feature, I learned to continuously make progress, finding a balance between “diving deep” into my explorations and recognizing when it’s sufficient to move on. Additionally, I proactively sought insights and feedback from customers, fellow designers, researchers, and subject matter experts to better inform my design decisions.
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Constantly question the present

I learned how to effectively work within the limitations of the current framework while continuously pushing to improve the customer experience. One project I worked on allowed me to explore ideas beyond the initial scope, in which I realized that while there are design limitations in time-sensitive projects, there is still value in discovering what the ideal CX could be. From working on this team, I gained a deeper understanding of voice design and the significance of time-based UX, considering diverse contexts, whether in sovereign or transient states, and how they shape the customer experience. It encouraged me to regularly question the status quo and the metrics underpinning current design, urging me to question whether they genuinely reflect the customer experience or if the data is simply a reaction to presented options. My project, in particular, was in the context of touch-forward versus voice-forward interfaces, and this introspection drove me to constantly question in order to push for a better CX.
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Advocate for design

From sitting in cross-functional team meetings and leadership reviews, I was able to witness how industry designers collaborate, advocate, and defend their design decisions. Through this exposure and multiple 1:1 conversations with other members on the team, I was able to gain valuable insights into navigating the balance between advocating for customer needs and meeting overarching business objectives. This internship emphasized the significance of design advocacy and equipped me with techniques for doing so to ultimately deliver user-centric design solutions that also contribute to the long-term success of the organization.