Designing an AI product that doesn't feel like an Amazon product.

Case study masthead

I designed the builder and runtime views for the first version of an AI-powered agentic automation tool, before leading the creation of a design system that would power our public reveal. And, yes, that's a real screenshot from The Register. This case study has been abbreviated for public display.

  • Role
  • Product & Design System UX Lead
  • Contributions
  • UX Design
  • Visual design
  • Prototyping
  • Front-end code
  • AI Integration

What is AI-native?

AI-native was a cliché with about 3 days of ChatGPT’s launch.

Yet, when we evaluated the first products launched under Amazon’s Quick umbrella, it was clear that our products lagged behind, and part of the reason was that our design system was originally designed years before, and for analytics-intensive business intelligence tools. And so, we began creating a new design system that would enough our products to compete with the best from Anthropic, OpenAI, and more.

To do this, we’d need an AI-native design system, which we defined as:

  • Allowing users to seamlessly switch between natural language and structured interfaces.
  • Being input- and output- agnostic.
  • Allowing builders of all disciplines to work in the tool of their choice with the same source of truth.
  • Allowing the system to generate UI in real-time without builder input, using the same guidance as our human builders.

Not included: capsule shapes buttons, pastel gradients, and diffuse drop shadows.

Defining a design system

We have over 30 design systems. What's one more?

Despite previously presenting to hundreds of builders on why and how to avoid creating new design systems, I pitched the the creation of Continuum, our new design system. The legacy design system had too many technical blockers to attempt a migration and no other design system offered what we wanted, so we evaluated the costs and benefits of a clean-sheet design.

  • We could get a head-start by using ShadCN and RadixUI as a baseline
  • Our components could be flexible and composable, allowing us to be future-proof
  • A modern visual design language would be easier to implement consistently and with high quality, even with customer-provided visual themes.
  • Create components that represent core objects of our project, not just atoms and basic elements.
  • We could expand across devices and platforms.
  • We would, in the words of our leaders and customers, deliver a product that “doesn’t look or feel like an Amazon product.”

Introducing Continuum.

Continuum logo concepts

These logo concepts introduced our brand to internal users. The first Extends the Q/Continuum Star trek reference. The second uses 3D-Rendered forms and light to create a dynamic, evolving logo.

“Lighthouse” and “Monster” logo animations.

I’ll share more as information is publicly released. Until then, enjoy these logo concepts.