Amazon — Case study
Prime Video Design System
Prime Video is a content aggregator and creator, and its brand and content live across many parts of the user journey.
Our design system was crucial for representing the brand properly and keeping the design process scalable and efficient.
The problem
The Prime Video brand, content and service communication were defined when competitors still focused mainly on DVD sales and few digital streaming offers existed. Since then, our service had changed its naming, subscription models and content offering. And Prime Video’s ecosystem was fueled not only by internal designers, but also by external design resources.
Data showed that churn had increased, and research indicated that users were confused about how to watch our content.
How can we empower internal and external designers to portray our service, content and subscriptions consistently?
Our desired outcome
We develop a design system that strives for clarity to elevate the customer experience. It explains how content differs, which subscription is required to watch it and what makes each title unique.
The system is understandable and applicable for internal and external designers alike. Our intended success metrics: lower churn, higher click-through rates and longer dwell time.
Our approach
First, we mapped the entire user journey on our own channels (with some surprises). Starting in our own backyard felt right. We teamed up with product managers and marketing stakeholders to define requirements on both sides.
At first, we underestimated the sheer complexity of content opportunities outside our own realm. So we developed a set of solid design principles for the extended system:
The Prime customer is our king; the content wears the crown.
At Amazon, we always put customers first. Here it mattered even more: we needed a clear, concise messaging system that communicated WHAT customers can watch with WHICH subscription.
Every show is a brand.
This guide would deal with great talent from the film and series industry, so we treat every Prime Original as a brand in its own right and give it the space to tell its story.
Clarity is more important than stars.
We protect each show and the talent portraying its brand, but we never forget who our king is: the Prime customer. If we must sacrifice art and ego for a clear, concise customer experience, so be it.
Prime is the key to unlock.
Our service is a vessel that gets customers to the content they love, and Prime is the enabler. We emphasize this five-letter word wherever we can, as a bridge to the content people love.
We tested our assumptions iteratively across three campaigns, evaluating performance (click rates, view rates, dwell time) and how easily design colleagues could apply the system.
We adjusted and moved on to the next set of creatives to validate our assumptions.
Dialing back our own presence as the platform was key to letting each show express what its content is about.
Messaging guide
We applied the messaging guide across all languages with local colleagues, overcoming both language and cultural barriers.
The guide breaks down into three segments for choosing the right call to action:
01 Included with Prime
Logged-in users: “Watch now”
Logged-out users: “Watch with Prime”
02 Prime customer, purchase required
“Available to buy”
“Available to rent”
03 Prime customer outside Europe or the U.S.
“Watch on Amazon Prime Video”
We broke the system down into “snackable” one-pagers, giving our offshore design teams quick options for designing multiple content offerings.
We focused heavily on messaging: there were many complicated scenarios to think through, and the guide had to be easy to apply for offshore designers in Costa Rica, most of them non-native English speakers.
