The goal
My goal was to raise the bar on how Amazon Kids looked and felt by treating the whole portfolio as one product strategy. The devices had to be fun for kids to use, appealing to the parents buying them, and clear expressions of the Amazon Kids brand tenets across software, hardware, and the cases in between.
A portfolio that had outgrown its design
Amazon Kids had grown steadily since 2012 into tablets, Echo devices, and Kindles, but the visual design hadn't kept pace as a portfolio. Each product evolved on its own track. Without a shared design language, the family of products didn't read as a family, and that fragmentation was a missed opportunity to communicate the brand and earn customer trust.
One design language, end to end
We built a unified design language and applied it consistently across software, cases, and hardware, structured so the system could take on new products year over year. A Kids Edition product now looks like part of one family whether it's a tablet, an Echo, or a Kindle, with playful, kid-directed design carried through all of it.
How I led it
I made the case for kid-directed product design using sales and customer data, then brought the cross-functional teams along: design, research, product, ID, and marketing. I ran research studies that informed the strategy, translated customer inputs into design approaches, created the leadership presentations that secured design approval, and partnered closely with the ID team to get the language built into real, shippable hardware.
Timeline
- 2016 — Strategy brief; research to define the shared design language
- 2017 — First unified software and case designs ship; Fire Kids Edition tablets launch in illustrated cases
- 2017 — Panda, Tiger, and Rainbow Kids Edition Echo devices launch; sell out before Christmas
- 2018 — Design language extended to Kindle Kids Edition; illustrated cases outsell solid cases at holiday
Outcomes
The work showed up in the sales numbers. The Rainbow, Tiger, and Panda Kids Edition Echo devices sold out before Christmas, and the illustrated Kindle Kids Edition cases outsold the solid-color cases and sold out for the holiday.
Customer review
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