Project Outcome: from Hackathon winner to drive organization vision
My Role: UX Design Team: UX(1), SDM(1), PM(1)
Project Length: 1.5 month (from conception to pitch)
Company: Amazon

Sending Money Home

If you ask any immigrants with family abroad, “Tell me about your proudest moments.” Chances are, they’d talk about the moment when their family received the support.

“My mom, extended family, and my wife’s family in Mexico are #WhyISend EVERY month for 20 years. I help them pay bills and buy food.”

— Francisco in San Bernadino, CA

There are around 800 million people around the world that are directly supported by remittances. Most of the time, the small amounts of $200 could make up 60% percent of the household income. However, banks charge an enormous fee of money crossing the border - 7% is the global average, and even more fee if families need the money urgently.

Remitly is built to serve immigrants, to make it easy and fair for them to support families. The mission lies in the heart of all my design projects at Remitly.

Problem & Goal

“Amazon Devices” are all the devices manufactured by Amazon, such as Kindle, Echo and Fire TV. Over 200 million customers visit “Amazon Devices” product pages every year. Those customers come from different shopping stages: lower funnel shoppers have already done their research and are ready to make a purchase; mid-funnel shoppers want to compare different models; upper funnel shoppers are brand new to the device and are looking for educational content, etc.

Current product pages treat every customer as if they are ready to make a purchase. Upper funnel and mid-funnel customers looking for educational content were often disoriented by pages of accessory upsells on top (see screenshots below). While this pattern works well for lower funnel customers, it creates barrier to entry for upper funnel customers (which counts for ~50% sessions).

My goal is to redesign “Amazon Devices” product pages to meet customers coming from different shopping stages.

Our Customers

Amazon devices customers differ depending on the product line. In this case study, I’ll focus on the voice assistant (Alexa and Echo) product line.

Based on customer market research studies, upper funnel customers across all archetypes are in need of more educational features about Alexa and Echo.

Customer Shopping Journey Map

I took established customer shopping stages research and mapped existing features onto each stage. For example, “devices comparison chart” is a feature for both upper funnel and mid-funnel shoppers who are still deciding which device to purchase, while “better together deals” feature is for lower-funnel shoppers who already know which device they want.

Customer shopping journey map revealed that adding “more educational features” is not enough: Since each shopping stages involve a complex set of features, we need to help customers navigate to those features.

Zone Concept:

Customer journey map also provides me a birds-eye view of all features, showing that many features share a similar theme. I explored grouping features into “zones”. For instance, “customer Q&A”, “customer reviews” and “customer videos” are all under the zone “community sentiment”.

This is when things start to click: if the product page is organized into consistent and predictable zones, then customers can find features by looking for the zone. Just like a wardrobe with clearly labeled sections.

Personalization:

While reading through past UX research studies, one repeated insight caught my eye: when mid-funnel customers come to the detail page, they would "jump” to “comparison chart of all devices” and ignoring all other content in-between. This behavior generalizes to other shopping stages.

How might we help customers navigate to the zone that is most relevant to their current shopping journey?

I introduced personalization concept into zones: zones can be expanded and collapsed based on customers shopping journey. Now, customers coming from different shopping stages will see a product page that is tailored to their needs.

Product Vision and UX Strategy:

Upon this point, the product vision comes clear: Amazon Devices product pages will evolve and adapt as customers progress in their shopping journeys, bringing all the relevant information to customers.
The UX strategy is to use zones that are personalized to customers shopping journey and stays consistent throughout their journeys (e.g., “community sentiment” zone which consists of customer reviews is always on the bottom)

Finding Sponsors for the Product Vision

I collaborated with a PM and a SDM to create a one-pager for our org’s Hackathon. The one-pager consisted of information below to communicate the product vision:

Customer problems: I summarized the problems we are solving, backed by UX and market research data (“current product pages treat every customer as if they are ready to make a purchase, ignoring the needs of upper-funnel and mid-funnel customers”).
How are we solving this problem: I started with the vision of Amazon product pages adapt to customers’ shopping journey. Then provided the strategy of zone and personalization.
Business justification: PM put together a financial opportunity estimate.
Tech architecture: SDE created a high level architecture based on my design strategy.

We won #1 prize 🏆 in the Hackathon. What’s more important, one director became the sponsor for my product vision, and provided the opportunity to pitch this idea in a VP offsite

Storytelling

The wireframes alone are not enough to communicate the product vision, especially in a VP offsite when each proposal only gets a few minutes of spotlight. Therefore, I created customer stories, high-fidelity designs, and before-after comparison to show-off the product vision’s customer benefits. This approach worked really well — I got the opportunity to turn this hackathon project into a PR/FAQ.

Creating a PR/FAQ document

At Amazon, a PR/FAQ document is at the core of every innovation. It is also an opportunity for me to get funding for this project. Below is my designer responsibility of the PR/FAQ:

Show product vision and strategy, especially the customer impact.
Create detailed designs so that tech team can estimate HC for the project.
Identify a MLP that is backed by data (MLP stands for “Minimal Lovable Product”, it is the minimal tech effort that is required for customers to adore a product).
Demonstrate operation efficiency. Show how my product vision not only benefits customers but also easy to execute by internal teams.