Amazon Lists North Star Vision
Lists Vision CX demo sample. Scroll down to see more.
Background
As a 20+ year old product, Amazon Lists has become a platform with a number of disparate experiences and many little-used legacy features. The tech stack was old and the CX was clunky. It started as a place for customers to save things that they wish to find again later. Now it’s threatening to become a dumping ground for teams from across Amazon for store their content. It has become increasingly difficult for customers to find what they’ve saved. The root of it all was the lack of a clear and inspiring customer-focused future vision to align the cross-functional team. The VP of Amazon Shopping had challenged the team to come forth with a clear vision for what a great Lists CX looks like.
My Role
As the Principal UX design leader, I rallied the cross-functional team (Product, Engineering and Design) in a Collaborative Working Backwards process to articulate and align on the customer problems that we needed to solve. I then led the cross-functional brainstorm sessions to generate a broad set of customer-focused, think-big ideas.
I created and owned the overarching strategy of the vision, led a team of designers to bring the vision to life through user stories and UX design. I provided creative direction through weekly design sprints, brought the end-to-end customer experience to life through animation and directed the final presentation. I presented the vision to cross-functional leadership team and the VP of Amazon Shopping.
Impact
I re-energized an aging team (Amazon Lists) and their product (Lists) and injected hope in the Amazon Shopping leadership by delivering a design-led customer-focused Northstar vision for Amazon Lists.
The vision determined the 3-year roadmap for the Lists team, and was used to recruit/attract top talents as the team rebuilds.
The vision ended a long-held debate on whether "heart" was like or save by showing an end-to-end experience that brings unique value to the customers.
I demonstrated the power of the design-led approach (the Collaborative Working Backwards process) and the strategic leadership that Design brings to the table.
The team was able to launch the first feature (2-ways to save, see below) 4 months after establishing the vision. A record for the Amazon Lists team.
Powerful “compare” feature in Lists to help you easily evaluate your options in one place.
An “auto-archive” feature to hide items from the active list view once the customer has made a purchase
Easily save items as you shop
Adopt short-press and long-press interaction pattern to support both casual users (85% Lists users maintain one active list) and power users (15% maintain multiple lists).
