UX INTERNSHIP | AMAZON

I got to join the Amazon Advertising Experience team for the summer, giving me the incredible opportunity to learn from and work with an incredible team of designers, researchers, writers, and managers. Unfortunately, I can't show my work here, but don't hesitate to contact me to discuss my project! 

MY ROLE               
current state audits, user personas,
sketching, wireframes, design, prototypes

YEAR 
Summer, 2017

UNDERSTANDING THE PRODUCT

Current State Audits 

To understand the product that I would be redesigning, I outlined and annotated the steps that users take. I presented these audits to our sister team who was unfamiliar with our products and printed them to hang on our floor so that everyone can be more acquainted with the holistic product.

DELIVERABLES    
- Annotated flows of current product

UNDERSTANDING THE PEOPLE

User Personas

Working with UX researchers, I distilled down a set of 4 core personas to help align the org on who we were designing and developing for. I held a “meet and greet” presentation to introduce the personas and provided takeaways to help people include them in their workflow.

DELIVERABLES    
- Core set of user personas
- "How-to" guide to using personas in your workflow (.pdf)
- Org presentation & persona takeaways
- Persona capes

DESIGNING FOR THE FUTURE

Future State Concepts

Once I understood the current product, and who I was designing for, I began iterating on dashboard widgets and creating a modular system to solve for our users’ pain points and needs.

In total, I sketched, wireframed, designed, and prototyped 115 widget concepts, and 13 dashboard concepts. I prototyped the dashboard that I felt solved the most immediate need of our advertisers and presented the breadth of my work to my team. If I had more time, the next step would be to test my designs with real users and iterate from those findings.

DELIVERABLES    
- Sketch, wireframe, design, and prototype
- Data visualizations & dashboard concepts

Design should be backed by Data  

Design can’t just be for the sake of design, it needs to serve a purpose and solve a problem. Design decisions should be intentional and using data to help understand the why, what, and who you need to design for is crucial to supporting why you made a design choice.

Get clear about the feedback you want 

Feedback is invaluable, but getting clear on the feedback that you need is just as important. Understanding that people’s time is precious, being clear about what you need from a meeting, review, or critique is invaluable.

Accessibility  

I was intentional about my color and font size choices, making sure that the contrast ratio would suit all types of users. As I my internship was coming to an end, I began thinking about screen readers but would like to have dove deeper into understanding that.

Tell a compelling story 

A designer’s job is to be able to communicate their designs and why they are successful, and the ability to communicate a captivating, clear story about the designs can be the difference from a yes and a no.