Amazon (Prime Video) Internship case study

UX Design Intern

UX Design Internship Summary

Through my time as an intern, I owned the evolution of what began as a social sharing feature of X-Ray content, to a scalable architectural solution for additional content added to the X-Ray playback experience. I presented to stakeholders such as the Creative Director and VP of Prime Video. I touched all levels of the design process with this project. I did a vast amount of research and carefully logged and organized my findings and project progress to allow my coworkers to track the findings or collaborate with me. I worked consistently with product and engineering to define my work and ensure it could be shipped (and it has been shipped - check out my feature on Grand Tour X-Ray "Behind The Scenes" tab on any device!). I worked in wireframes, low fidelity and high fidelity throughout the process. I worked with other designers and (happily) received consistent feedback from my mentors and coworkers. this project was a cross-platform work stream so I had the opportunity to work with and design for mobile (iOS and Android), FireTV, 3P Living room and web teams.

Understanding Prime Video

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Working with Amazon Video presented some challenges for me, I never had the chance to use the Amazon Video platform as it was not available in Canada before I started. The devices I was designing for were ones that I had never used before (Fire TV, Amazon Kindle Tablets and Android devices). This took a lot of acclimatization and research to understand all the different elements of Amazon Video and the constraints of the devices I was designing for. I worked with the X-Ray team to ask questions about the current functionality of the feature and how a video in video (ViV) experience could fit into that. We focused on aligning this feature with the release of The Grand Tour Amazon Original series.

Main internship project: Behind the scenes for X-Ray

Planning

During the planning phase, research and wireframe iteration were key to the process:

  1. Researched other video-in-video content providers (competitive analysis)

  2. Understanding The Grand Tour viewers by researching their old show, Top Gear

  3. Heavily documented research, meetings, project outcomes on Confluence to keep information in one place

  4. Multiple user flows, wireframe solutions to better understand the information architecture that we would need to support this new addition

  5. Continuously reviewed with PM to ensure it was aligning with requirements.

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Refine and validate

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With over 1500 iterations reviewed and explored, it was time to narrow down and focus with a solid IA in place:

  1. Worked with development to ensure it was possible

  2. Defined the specific content that we will need to be able to support

  3. Started working in higher fidelity to present the solution to stakeholders (feedback from all levels at Amazon and positions)

  4. With a final solution, I self-lead a full 3-day user test of the product and gathered information on how to improve the effectiveness of the design

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Deliver and complete

Everything was wrapping up at the end of my internship and I had to return to school, so I made sure that the project was in a effective place to be handed off and delivered in my absence.

  1. Provided the full user testing results, possible solutions and actionable next steps

  2. Handed over redlines of my work

  3. Had the Confluence page fully updated with all my work, links to files, documentation of meetings, project milestones etc.

Try out my feature "Bonus Content" on X-Ray on any device for The Grand Tour on Prime Video today!

Hand-off and planning my return

The project launched in November 2016 as I was away in Canada finishing my degree. For my final presentation on my internship, I highlighted my entire Amazon experience. From this project, to the projects I worked as a support designer on, to the people I met and the on campus networking events I participated in. After a phenomenal few months, I concluded my presentations with happy tears. I am unsure if it was the tears of joy or my work itself, but I received a return offer for after graduation to come back as a full time UX designer at Amazon. I returned to Amazon August 2017.