Amazon Fire Tablet Launcher Vision
Background
Fire Tablet Launcher is the landing experience when customers turn on their device. It contains links and recommendations that point to different destination apps, Books, Videos, Games, Kindles, etc.. Previously launcher was spread across a 10-page UI. From research and usage data, we learned that customers find the 10-page UI hard to navigate, the content on Launcher is too spread-out and perceived irrelevant. Additionally it’s difficult to get to customer’s own content (downloaded, uploaded, borrowed, etc.)
I led the Fire Tablet design team to establish the vision for the redesign of the Fire Tablet Launcher from 2018 through 2019. We significantly simplified a previously 10-page UI down to a 3-page design, with distinct purpose of each new page. The ultimate goal was to significantly reduce the friction and cognitive load in the Launcher CX, help customers easily discover new and relevant digital content and effortlessly enjoy their downloaded/owned content.
My Role
As the Principal UX Designer, I injected user-centric design culture into the design team by modeling and coaching team members to ground ideation and design in research insights and leveraging rapid prototypes and user testing to learn early and iterate fast and often. I’ve also established strong design leadership with stakeholders by inspiring and influencing the Product and Engineering teams to invest in the Tablet Launcher overhaul and successfully shaped their roadmap for the following 2-3 years.
Impact
When the MLP (minimal lovable product) of the redesign finally hit the market 18 months later, it stayed true to the original vision. All key business metrics (down-stream revenue) and customer engagement metrics (engagement hours, monthly active users, etc.) have seen steady, positive growth as the result of the vision established under my leadership.
Wireframes
UX Design
Rapid prototyping and Lab study
To inform our hypotheses with qualitative user insights, I led the team in creating a few different new UX models, producing functional on-device prototypes along with paper prototypes and directed the lab study with a group of active Fire Tablet users. The study confirmed our hypothesis that reducing the number of pages in Tablet Launcher CX lowered the effort in getting to the content customers look for. But we also learned things we didn’t anticipate, such as mixing content types on the same page introduces visual noise and lowers the perceived level of personal relevance. These were valuable insights to guide the team as we refine the design.
