🏢 Design @ Amazon. Part 1 - Decentralised
🏢 Design @ Amazon. Part 1 - Decentralised
This was my first “shock” when I joined Amazon in 2018. Thinking about this now, I understand why it is as it is. Do I think it’s perfect?
Starting a new series to share my story and observations about working as a UX designer at Amazon.
ℹ️ Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this website are strictly my own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of my current or previous employers.
This was my first “shock” when I joined Amazon in 2018. Thinking about this now, I understand why it is as it is. Do I think it’s perfect?
Of course not.
Frankly, I have been thinking about this for quite some time, questioning the status quo and my own thoughts.
I clearly remember my very first (big) frustration with Amazon’s UX. They organized a workshop for folks interested in building voice interfaces for Amazon Alexa devices and I attended the event with my colleagues from my previous job (shout-out to Momentus aka Softvision aka Cognizant 🤙)
This was before I started working here, so I was acting like a true customer without any inside knowledge. The level of systems fragmentation on my “journey” to create a new Alexa skill was rather disturbing and frankly disappointing. Definitely, not the experience I was expecting from one of the biggest tech companies in the world.
I think I’ve counted 4-5 completely different platforms with (close to) zero consistency. As a designer, I thought it was unforgivable. Also bad for the business, because after dabbling with this for a few hours, I didn’t have any intention to try to do it again. It was that bad.
Later, after I looked under Amazon’s hood, I understood the reasons for such less-than-ideal UX outcomes.
Amazon has a decentralized design practice.
What this means is that the vast majority of design teams work independently from each other. There is no single leader who oversees all design teams to make sure they work in unison.
At first, I was very skeptical of such a structure. This results in a very inconsistent experience for the customers. Sometimes, even when the customer is trying to get one job done, as I elaborated earlier.
As a designer, this is obviously a big flaw resulting in poor UX. However, from the business point of view, I realize that creating a more hierarchical design structure has its own problems. In order to make sure all “branches” get aligned and create a more holistic and consistent experience, you will sacrifice speed.
Think about the size of such a company as Amazon. It’s gigantic. There are probably hundreds of big distinct problem spaces, with an unknown number of design teams supporting them. If you start adding mechanisms and structures to align potentially dozens of teams before making decisions, you will never launch anything.
Now, after thinking through this, and speaking with a few people, I am more empathetic with such constraints. Even though I am very disappointed with the resulting (inconsistent) experience, I don’t know how I would solve this problem. I feel like there must be a solution but will require some bold actions by the leadership team.
Does anyone have ideas? 🤔