Amazon Kids Redesign
The Goal
Lead the design strategy, iteration, validation, and launch of an updated cross-device Custom Experience (CX) for Amazon Kids. Better enable Amazon Kids engineers to scale across operating systems, accommodate new content types, and new features. Increase engagement and customer retention by increasing the distinct days each customer uses Amazon Kids+ in their first 30 days.
Key Outcomes
The new Amazon Kids CX was successfully introduced to our customers with the launch of Amazon Kids+ on iOS in June 2018. Amazon Kids+ launched with a 4 star rating and was featured on the homepage of the iOS app store. Two months later, the new CX launched on Amazon Fire tablets. Amazon Kids+ is bundled with the Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablets and is one of Amazon's bestselling family of devices.
“… I love how everything is kid and baby friendly. The set up was super easy and fast! My son loves his tablet and I’m super excited I purchased this!! Plenty of fun for kids of all ages for sure!!!”
Background
Unlike adults, children’s abilities, needs, and interests change quickly. In just one year, 4-year-old experiences significant cognitive, motor, and technical growth. What engages a 6-year-old is vastly different than what engages a 12-year-old. The redesigned kid’s UI keeps these changes in mind and is designed to grow with a child as they mature.
When I first joined the Amazon Devices team in 2011, one of my first projects was to design and launch a tablet experience for kids. Upon returning to the team in 2016, the CX had not significantly changed. It became clear that the original design system could not scale to accommodate the addition of new content, features, and device types. Many customer pain-points were discovered through both engagement metrics and customer reviews.
I introduced the Amazon Kids organization to design thinking workshops that I sponsored, directed, managed, and deployed across a 200+ organization. This strategy resulted in the development of a scalable, cross-device design system.
The resulting Amazon Kids design moved content discovery to the home screen through layouts with mixed content and genre rows. It is responsive and includes a flexible grid that ensures consistency across layouts and breakpoints. The UI is also media-type aware and can adapt from mobile phones to TV (e.g. 10-foot) environments. The design encourages endless discovery by introducing content interstitial pages with controls that make downloading, launching, and removing content easier. The new design system also optimized the organization's resources, reducing the number of designers and engineers needed to support new and incremental features.
Roles & Responsibilities
Roadmap and design resource planning to support the redesign and ongoing incremental UI and feature design.
Engaged with partner organizations across Amazon to ensure marketing and development support for the launch of the new UX and ongoing addition of features.
Planned and engaged research to validate the feature set and incremental usability testing.
Engaged executive leadership to raise visibility and drive the team to incorporate product feedback.
Fostered an ongoing partnership with Engineering and Product leadership across multiple organizations at Amazon to define the go-to-market strategy, roadmaps, feature backlogs, and product iterations based on customer and usage data feedback.
Optimized resources and developed organizational efficiencies through leading the design of systems that can scale across Amazon products and services.
Developed and introduced design processes that enable the Kids Experience team to deliver creative, beautiful, and engaging designs.
