Alexa Shopping Product Variation
Enhancing the product variation selection experience on Amazon's Echo Show Devices.
01 | Overview
2023 Amazon Design Internship
In the summer of 2023, I was a UX design intern on the Alexa Shopping team at Amazon. I worked 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.
Due to confidentiality agreements, I am unable to disclose details about my projects. However, here are some highlights and key takeaways from my three-month journey!
Figma, UserTesting.com, Adobe Premiere Pro
June - September 2023
12 weeks
Manager - Angela Kung
PM - Srinitya Duppanapudi Satya
Designers - Jeff Carson, Sydney Nguyen
02 | Highlights
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 selection experience for the Echo Show Family, aimed to launch by the 4th quarter of 2023
- Collaborating effectively within a team of four designers to reimagine the information architecture, GUI, and VUI for the Echo Show Family product details page
- Conducting comprehensive audits of current shopping and purchase experiences on the Echo Family Devices to identify inconsistencies and opportunities for improvement
- Spearheading unmoderated and moderated user testing efforts to gather user 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 Adobe Premiere Pro to highlight both VUI and GUI elements in the prototypes
- Engaging in future-state explorations for Amazon’s product variation feature to imagine the ideal customer experience unburdened by existing constraints
03 | Reflection
Key Takeaways
This internship challenged me to navigate large amounts of ambiguity, embracing it 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.
I learned to effectively work within technical constraints without inhibiting myself from exploring ideas beyond the initial scope to envision what the ideal customer experience could be. I deepened my understanding of voice design and time-based UX, learning how diverse contexts like sovereign and transient states shape the customer experience. My project, in particular, was in the context of touch-forward versus voice-forward interfaces, and this introspection encouraged me to regularly question the status quo and the metrics underpinning current designs in order to push for a better customer experience.
Attending cross-functional team meetings and leadership reviews gave me insight into how industry designers collaborate, advocate, and defend their decisions. Through this exposure and 1:1 conversations with team members, I gained valuable insights into balancing customer needs with business objectives to deliver user-centric design solutions that also support the organization's long-term success.
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