Thinking beyond
the QR code
Amazon, the world’s largest seller, is in a unique position to pioneer how people shop on their televisions.
Over the last decade, televisions have continued to get smarter and smarter, but the advertisements we see on them have stayed pretty dumb. With most TVs now connected to the internet, and some even having digital assistants of their own, Amazon saw an opportunity to think bigger, and asked us to design a future vision to demonstrate the creative potential of interactive television ads.
Over several months, we designed a foundational framework and over 80 concepts for how that framework could extend to all kinds of products and services.
Role
Design Director
Project Length
3 months
Research & strategy
During discovery, we saw that few ads were doing anything beyond QR codes, which require that users have a mobile device ready to scan. We wanted to do something different, and lean in to the power of Alexa to build a seamless, lean-back experience. We aligned on this, and other decisions during a strategy workshop with the team.
Design exploration
We went broad when exploring concepts, and crafted storyboards to flesh out those we felt particularly exciting and novel. We also explored ways to elevate the visual design of the Alexa TV experience with moodboards and visual sketches.
A scalable framework
Our system needed to work with everything from cheap consumables to expensive cars to tax services, as well as both existing and bespoke ad creative. For the most of these cases, we position Alexa on a layer above ads, signaling interactivity and suggesting actions based on the product.
Something cheap you’ve bought before? Add it straight to your cart. Expensive headphones already on your wishlist? Check out an interactive product tour.
Extended interactions
An immediate purchase doesn’t make sense for most products, so we crafted several unique, app-like experiences to use for brands that needed more, like trying meditation with Headspace or accessing special events with Prime Music.
We knew it was unlikely users would delay their watching experience for prolonged interactions, so users can save these experiences for later to explore on their own time, across any device.
