Amazon Brand Innovation Lab
Streamlining the iteration process for designers.
- TIMELINE
- May – August 2023
- ROLE
- User Experience Design Intern
- SKILLS
- Figma, Asana, Quip
WHAT IS THE BRAND INNOVATION LAB?
Amazon's Brand Innovation Lab (BIL) is the internal creative studio within Amazon Ads that dreams up custom campaigns and interactive experiences for big brands. Working across Prime Video, Twitch, Alexa, physical stores, and Amazon.com, the team blends advertising, entertainment, and emerging tech to create things customers haven't seen before. The team is a mix of designers, technologists, and strategists who take a brand's story and turn it into fun, interactive touchpoints people can actually shop and explore.
OVERVIEW
During my internship at Amazon, I developed a Figma component library for the BIL design team, featuring the 10 most frequently used layout components. The goal was to improve design efficiency by standardizing commonly used elements across custom landing pages for mobile and desktop.
To inform the library, I analyzed patterns across hundreds of campaign landing pages, interviewed designers to understand their workflows, and mapped out component structures in FigJam. I then designed and built the components in Figma, conducted usability testing with designers, and iterated based on their feedback to ensure the library was intuitive and adaptable to different campaigns.
In addition to this project, I contributed to the Summer 2023 Coach Virtual Try-On campaign.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Balancing simplicity and flexibility: Initially, I focused on building complex components that leveraged Figma's advanced features. However, I learned that creating a scalable library meant prioritizing simplicity and flexibility, ensuring components could be easily adopted by designers and adapted across different campaigns and workflows.
- Bridging design and development: I collaborated with a Design Technologist to translate my Figma components into production-ready Halfpipe components, gaining a deeper understanding of how design systems are implemented in development.
- Designing at scale: Working within a large, cross-functional team taught me how to think beyond individual design solutions and create systems that support a broader range of users, workflows, and campaigns.