List Sharing
A significant share of my work at Amazon was focused on Wish Lists and Registries. One of the most difficult design problems with Amazon’s shopping features is managing the states across contexts. Wish Lists exemplify that issue and the ability to share a Wish List exposes the problem to users. In the sharing UI, I believe locality was of the utmost importance, along with a “hub” where the user could visualize the control they have over the product.
Stakeholder:
Amazon.com, RCX Intern in 2011
Problem:
The Wish List feature, which functions like an everyday registry, was a powerful shopping tool that was integrated across the shopping platform, but hardly discovered. Not only do Lists make users more comfortable engaging products, but they also make it easier to buy products for other people– however there was no way to let your friends know a list existed without sharing it with everyone.
Goals:
- Increase awareness of Wish List
- Add Wish List users
- Sell more products through Wish List
Approach:
This project was derived from research over the Wish List feature where users primarily showed concern over the fact that anyone could see a list if they made it. I altered the original implementation to include a “shared” state using patterns from other features that already existed on Amazon.com.
Result:
Today Wish Lists and their functionality are no secret, and the share feature is there to spread the word. It still functions as a link and not list, a technical limitation I ran into at the time.
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop