SHAUN POST • UX DESIGN LEAD

Intro: Amazon SmileCode
Challenge + Response

Role: Lead Designers > Shaun Post, Richard Glazier (UK), Peiqi Tang
Creative Leadership > Steve Susi (UK), Sunil Ramesh
Developers > Michael Lou, Daniel Apt (UK)
Developed: 2017; iOS (Amazon Mobile)

Amazing collaboration between the US and UK Amazon Teams. Spanning multiple organizations and disciplines to bring this amazing event and technology to life for the very first time. SmileCode is our way to ensure our form of QR gives our customers a sense of trust when scanning to purchase products.

For the first time since bringing Black Friday to the UK in 2010, Amazon is hosting a four day ‘Home of Black Friday' pop up experience in central London to celebrate the start of the Christmas shopping season and the UK's biggest annual deals event. Customers will be invited to explore the best of Amazon's Black Friday Sale and Amazon Prime, try their hand at a range of games to win prizes and take part in one of the many themed workshops, from foodie fun to crafts tutorials. Visitors to the ‘Home of Black Friday' can also sample new products and get advice from gifting and lifestyle experts, as well as enjoy a few extra surprises throughout the four day event.

"Every item inside Amazon's pop-up was for sale, and would be getting a discount on or before Black Friday, and you could get to the sales page by scanning a SmileCode next to each thing." (Gizmodo.co.uk)

In addition to this amazing first for Amazon Pop Up shops, we also partnered with Amazon Lockers and Hearst Media to bring SmileCodes globally to customers that subscribe and purchase magazine's in retail locations. Our goal for this project was to experiment and test to see how customers will use this technology, what their views are and if it removes friction points from the CX.

**Process and project details can be seen by request.

Our team collaborated a lot of different partners to test how customers would both use and view SmileCodes; such as Amazon Lockers, Cosmopolitan and Seventeen Magazine to name a few. Reinventing how customers shop by removing friction points in search. No need to research what a specific item is called, how much it costs or where to buy it. Simply scan the SmileCode with your Amazon app and 1-Click Buy. Over 350 codes in each magazine that deep linked to unique ASIN's on Amazon.com.

Part I: The Investigation Begins...
Define

EU AMG Team in London wanted to give their 3rd party vendors a way to advertise using Amazon. Instead of the standard QR code we were challenged to come up with a solution that our visual technology could recognize and scale to hundred of thousands of products. Our challenge was to identify a way that we can use our brand as a traffic driver in both physical and digital context.

Research

Research began by understanding the market of QR. Looking at repetitive patterns, structure & nature. How can we clearly separate ourselves from a standard QR code. What makes a SmileCode unique? We also looked at competitors and what they are actively pursing in this space.

Part II: Design
Concept

The concept began by traveling from SF to London to collaborate with our EU partners in advertising. Understanding what makes up a good code that can be randomly generated compared to one that is purely visual aesthetic. Find a common ground between the two was a challenge.

Compose

Part of our exploration was understanding from development how each code is made up. What percentage of bits need to be covered for our camera to clearly identify the code in full. As long as a percentage of the entire code was filled we could randomly generate a new one that deep linked to specific ASIN's. Part of the compromise was cutting out a section that was used for visual aesthetics.

Design

Now that our team understood the requirements at hand. We broke off into teams and began researching, designing and figuring out ways to integrate this feature. Part of my responsibility and the rest of the design team was to go through multiple iterations. First round focused on visual aesthetics. Second focused on the technical design. Third and final round was a comprise of the two rounds previously.

Part III: Ship It and Repeat!
Test

Our team tested both internal and external customers over a three day period. Asking questions like the one you see below. Imagine you were looking at this movie poster somewhere in your city and wanted to find out more information or buy tickets instantly. 80% of customers noticed the code. 65% of customers understood that that code would take them to some relevant to the movie poster. Based on the directions 25% found how to scan the code.

Analyze & Refine

For the first time since bringing Black Friday to the UK in 2010, Amazon is hosting a four day ‘Home of Black Friday' pop up experience in central London to celebrate the start of the Christmas shopping season and the UK's biggest annual deals event. Based on data we found a significant increase in traffic and STR over a couple days. Customers understood what the code meant with clear instructions. Having clear on boarding made a world of a difference. See below some data points.