Amazon

As a Visual UX Designer at Alexa Design Systems, I craft visually compelling and uniquely delightful customer experiences across various screens, from the Alexa app to Fire TV. Collaborating with a talented and diverse team, I focus on delivering highly functional and beautiful engagement opportunities.

Multimodal Experiences

My work at Amazon centers on screen devices for the home, where I'm challenged to craft visual stories. These compositions aim to glean insights, provide information and guidance, and ultimately, dazzle and delight – often within the same design. Working with screens ranging from nightstand size to wall-mounted, my canvas frequently involves diverse forms of information.

Once leadership was aligned, I developed an initial set of 15 illustrations and then collaborated with an animator to bring these characters to life.

Alexa+ Morph Gallery Set

In a tech heavy, post-pandemic world, Morph illustrations evoke the senses, hinting at soothing movement and dimension into an otherwise flat surface. Tones pulled from ADS color palette bring calming undulation and subtle glows of optimism.

Alexa+ Hero Set Set

Inspired by the loopy cursive “a” of the new Alexa mark, my final design is an abstract interpretation. I developed a set that explores the curving forms from various angles, illustrating Alexa’s ever-present and active role in making our customers' lives easier.

Echo Spot Personality

I had the opportunity to develop and create animated Alexa responses for this engaging little device. The illustrations I designed were intended to complement the Echo Spot’s friendly, round form and foster a fun and effortless connection between customers and Alexa. Throughout the design process for each response, I considered motion implementation and aimed for a universal appeal that ensured quick comprehension across all twelve utterances.

I simplified elements, then limited the color palette for cohesiveness and easy comprehension.

Collaborating closely with the device motion team, I created twelve interactive personality moments for customers to discover with Alexa on the new Echo Spot.

The visuals were conceived as naturalistic and vaguely recognizable forms, imbued with an otherworldly sense of mystery and intrigue. For each distinct artistic approach, I created a storyboard of four static visual variations for the motion team to bring to life, timed precisely to a haunting and mesmerizing soundtrack composed by the sound team exclusively for these ambient experiences.

Alexa Greetings – Echo Show 10

This innovative Echo family home screen device utilizes motion and voice detection to move with you. I collaborated with Product, Motion, and Sound designers to design delightful Alexa interactions. To circumvent on-screen motion limitations, I worked with the team to implement a cross-fade technique. This involved creating three distinct illustrations of a single scene, which were then used to create the illusion of change as the device screen moves.

Alexa Start-up Screen

My exploration for a proposed start-up screen experience on the new Echo Show 10

Alexa Timers

Working with the motion team, I helped create these unexpectedly delightful moments that bring a sense of fun to everyday duties.

Alexa Kid Screens

Some illustrated backgrounds I explored for kid-themed start-up and content screens

Scalable and Elevated

I was tasked with helping to create a scalable design system for the new Echo Show 5, designed to support numerous automated domain experiences with reduced curation. This required comprehensive color mapping, the creation of versatile backgrounds for rotating images, and, where necessary, illustrations that integrated well with the new split-screen layout. All components had to meet accessibility guidelines and offer an elevated, visually engaging stage for content and information.

Set-Up Experiences – Echo Devices

Before experiencing Alexa's delightful features, customers must set up their new Echo Show for functionalities like motion detection and visual ID. My goal was to establish an early connection between customer and device that felt humanistic, approachable, and visually engaging, while ensuring the vital information needed for setup remained clear and accessible.

Mounting Instructions – Echo Show 15

The Echo Show 15, Amazon's largest wall-mountable screen device, supports both landscape and portrait orientations. The accompanying creative needed to feature easily understood visuals that complemented the copy, specifically avoiding any resemblance to instructional diagrams. As the primary initial interaction with the device, a sophisticated and elevated feel was essential.

New Weather Icons – Echo Devices

Recognizing weather conditions as essential information for Echo device home screens, I revisited the existing weather visual library. Although the previous visuals effectively communicated the current weather, they lacked depth and felt stagnant. My design approach aimed to add depth, character, and a sense of transition, even though the final product would be static. Furthermore, the new visuals needed to be versatile enough for various scenarios and screen dimensions.

Project Polaris and Alexa Live

I had the opportunity to contribute my skills to the Amazon website rebrand and the development of a new website for the company's annual developer conference. This involved a collaborative effort with a talented team of UX/UI/Motion Designers and Engineers. The concepts we presented were chosen from a significant number of initial proposals submitted by internal teams and external agencies.

Project Polaris

Amazon provides a dedicated website for developers, offering resources like technical documentation, UX guides, developer tools, and tutorials. I collaborated closely with Senior Designers to develop a futuristic, expansive, and limitless aesthetic. My backgrounds and iconography were designed to create a visual language evoking movement, wonder, and an otherworldly feel.

Early Explorations

My initial conceptualization for this project delved into abstract shapes and patterns intended to symbolize the complex array of tools and other intangible resources that developers rely on to implement their highly specialized skillset. Additionally, I was exploring a light-mode rendition of the preferred design direction.

Alexa Live Website

This website functions as a registration and information hub for developers and engineers interested in guest speakers, discussions, and workshops scheduled for the annual event. The highly successful Polaris website revamp led leadership to request that Alexa Live emulate its ethereal visual style. In response, I selected colors for Alexa Live that more closely resonate with Amazon’s core brand colors.