Every few years I take a step back and review my designer tool kit. I’d worked on many new product naming and branding launches but I was looking to be part of a product team, building something from the ground up and delivering it to the customer. Amazon gave me that opportunity as a UX Design Producer within the Digital Devices Studio. The PIM design team created communication apps that ultimately landed on the Echo Show including Voice and Video Calling, Messaging and Contacts. We also led design of the household organization domains: Calendar, To Do List, Shopping List, Timers, Alarms, and Reminders. I was part of the team that established VUI+GUI platform patterns.

Before that we were building the Fire Phone. The first mobile phone with 3D cameras built in. On Fire Phone, my team designed communication apps including: Email, Calendar, Contacts, Dialer and Messaging.

I was fortunate to be Sr. UX Design Producer for two generations of Kindle Fire products, including overall framework, Search, Email, Calendar and Contacts.

Working collaboratively across 1st, 2nd and 3rd party app teams, I conducted 20+ application deep dives with engineers to ensure visual designs and interaction models were in the shipping build.

Tasked with shipping new features, services, products, or systems across the entire Kindle portfolio, I worked with amazing design, product and dev professionals. (Shout out to Blair Beebe and Joseph Buchta) They were generous and helped me add deep skills in the UX design process and delivery at the highest standards. I walked in hoping for a deep dive and was rewarded with a brutal reality check. It was awesome.

The situation

PIM products certainly have tech complexity. The Dev team has to integrate with third-party servers with changing APIs and sync protocols. My team was more focused on the front end experience. We were inventing new controls to make it easier for customers to find attachments, plan events or connect with their most important people.

We had launched new features where we changed some basic interactions. Swipe to delete, pull to refresh, and a moved position for the "new message" button.

We received customer service calls.

The solution

In response, we launched a fast-follow with overlays explaining the new features.

How did the fix perform

The customer service calls stopped. The PIM apps on the Fire Phone got a lot of usage. They were, unsurprisingly, among the most popular apps. Unfortunately, the entire project was a failure.

On tablets, usage of the PIM apps was pretty low. Most people purchase the Fire Tablet for entertainment such as watching videos, web browsing, playing games and reading. Productivity is not a top use case on the Fire Tablets. We had to provide a productivity suite to be competitive and have something to show in product comparison tables, but customers didn’t use the PIM suite of apps a lot. I think fewer than 5% entered their email address and PW in our Email app setup. In addition, a fair number of customers used the browser to check email.

My team had redesigned the visuals before I moved to another org. The tablet team has not touched the design in several years -- mostly because it’s not highly valued by customers, and it works pretty well.