Content guidance for Amazon devices
Services
Creating content patterns, writing design guidance
The project
Define content patterns and guidance for Amazon devices.
When I joined the Devices & Services Design Group (DDG) at Amazon, there was a very small content guide that covered Echo devices, Fire TV, Fire tablets, and the Alexa app. My goal was to expand this guidance and create standards across our devices.
The strategy
I started by conducting research to understand what aspects of writing designers and product managers were struggling with. I studied the companies who have incorporated content design guidance into their design systems to see what we were missing..
I then focused on how we could structure this guide to make it easy to use and fun to read. Once the structure was in place, I began drafting the guidance.
This guidance continues to evolve as we add component-specific guidance and patterns.
What I did
Conducted research with design and product partners
Created and documented content patterns and guidance
Built all pages within the CMS
Top 10 tips
During my research, I found that designers wanted a quick resource they could turn to for best practices and examples. This page quickly synthesizes the essentials of strong UX writing and includes relevant examples to illustrate the best practices.
Grammar and style
The grammar and style section covers the high-level things, like writing in active voice, to the nitty gritty details around serial commas and capitalization.
Action and button labels
When your guide covers all of Amazon’s devices and the Alexa app, promoting consistency is key. I audited our devices to identify the standard action labels, documented them here, and added best practices. I can’t count how many times I’ve pointed to this page during design reviews.
Content design patterns
An area that I’ve been expanding on when I have time is content patterns. This one has been a challenge as this guide covers all Amazon devices. I have to keep the guidance and pattern broad enough to cover these different use cases, but specific enough that it is helpful and accurate.
