Design Playground is a digital workspace tailored to enhance team collaboration, encourage the use of a consistent design language, and improve overall work efficiency.
During the summer 2023, I had the privilege to be part of the Amazon Photos UX Core Team as a UX Design Intern. From being part of this internship experience, I was able to engage and work with an exceptional and nurturing community comprising dedicated UX Designers, UX Researchers, Product Managers, and Software Engineers, fostering both learning and collaboration.
The Amazon Photos UX Core Team focuses on crafting engaging and user-friendly experiences and interactions to enhance the digital services for various platforms (e.g. iOS, Android, Web and Desktop) while prioritizing customer satisfaction through elegant and simple designs that are backed by analytical precision and a commitment to end-to-end experience delivery. As an intern, I was tasked to create a shared digital space for collaborative design exploration for our non-designer partners (e.g. Product Managers and Software Engineers), fostering team communication, encouraging a cohesive design language, maximizing efficiency, and maintaining visual consistency with design standards, regardless of direct designer involvement.
To achieve the project's goal, I conducted an extensive research and exploration process, which led me to refine my research question into:
What strategies can be implemented to create a team-wide digital space that addresses technical challenges, provides clear guidance, and ensures consistency with the established design standards and styles within the team's existing design system?
What I did during internship
- Pioneered the development of a foundational design toolkit to be utilized by the entire team, serving approximately 200 individuals
- Crafted a seamless user experience, allowing for the integration of existing design elements and configurations from the team's design system
- Innovated by creating new design components and templates, providing stakeholders with a broader array of options when leveraging pre-made components beyond those available in the team's design system
- Facilitated stakeholder proficiency in using design-centric tools through the organization and delivery of educational workshops.
What I learned from internship
- The significance of anchoring design iterations and choices in data derived from research
- Recognizing that the gradual adoption of new practices within a team should be viewed as a long-term endeavor
- Embracing failure as a valuable source of data; understanding that occasional setbacks can serve as insights to explain why specific problem-solving approaches may not have yielded the desired outcomes
Some of the pictures that I took during my internship at Seattle!
Due to NDA, I am unable to share any details of my work, but if you would like to learn more about the project, feel free to reach out to me through my email or LinkedIn :-)
Thank you so much for reading!
