We decided to redesign the Amazon application. Which was a bold decision considering it is one of the most successful companies in the world. However, we felt that there was potential for improvement.
Our initial observations from using the Amazon app was of it being very cluttered with no differentiation to the Amazon site itself. We felt there was an opportunity to explore an application that offered a more personalised experience with less clutter. The app currently bombards you with advertisements and irrelevant content displaying no empathy or understanding to you as a user.
For our initial research, we did some direct competitor analysis looking at Alibaba and Etsy in particular. We also looked at some applications that were successful in their own right. We looked at apps such as Revolut, Pinterest and Spotify and highlighted features where they excelled. This secondary analysis proved to be quite insightful and we wanted to explore if we could borrow their unique features and integrate them into our design.
We then created a survey to get an understanding into how users interact with Amazon. We had over 72 responses to the study and learned some key insights from this research. In particular, 37% of people found it hard or very hard to search for products online. We also gained some qualitative feedback from comments. A number of the comments complained about the site being “overwhelming” and the design not being the most pleasant.
We carried out another survey to get a more specific understanding of peoples experiences while shopping on the app. For this survey, we received 29 responses not as much as we would have liked but obtained more detailed data. Such as over 60% of people would prefer a more curated list of products relevant to them, nearly 80% did not ever click on advertisements, and 38% find the experience overwhelming. These results reinforced our initial thoughts on why we wanted to rethink the design.
Furthering our research, we then carried out some usability testing of the application to gain more qualitative data. From which we derived that people did feel inundated with irrelevant content. One observation that stood out from our testing was that there was ‘too much traffic.’ In looking back on this second survey, some of the questions may have been a bit leading and felt we could have constructed questions that had less bias.
After concluding our research, we were able to define our persona to which would inform on our design process. We created a storyboard as well to highlight our ideal situation on the benefits of using our redesign.
All of these components in our research helped us define our project goal. We wanted to create an app where Amazon would inform you of relevant products customised to you. An experience where you felt Amazon was your ’friend’ showing empathy to you and not barrage you with inappropriate goods.
Amazon Redesign 