Amazon Global Security Support System
My senior capstone team and I designed a digital support system for Amazon's loss prevention employees. This project was made to make task processes in actionable, easy to follow steps. The project won the University of Washington HCDE Capstone "Best in Show" award.
Dates: January 2018 - June 2018
Team: Eduardo Rojas, Kate Cowley, and Ted McDonald
Role: UX Designer and Researcher, Project Manager, and Video Lead
The Problem & Context
The loss prevention team is responsible for the safety and security of that facility, all of the people, and all of the product inside of it. In an effort to centralize all of this procedural knowledge, Amazon Global Security put together over 220 process maps, documenting standard operating procedures. The goal of these maps is to reduce reliance on tribal knowledge and provide LPs with reliable and actionable information.
Difficulties with these process maps are their PDF format, which lack interactivity and accessibility features. The links open in new pages and process maps do not conform to device constraints. They display all conditional knowledge that vary greatly in shape, length, and size, which can cause cognitive overload and impede navigation.
The Solution
Our solution presents standard operating processes in actionable, easy to understand steps. Through progressive disclosure, we simplify complex processes by presenting information as needed. Links and action items are presented to the user, rather than them having to search them out, and reporting is automated to save time. We conducted interviews and an organizational review of current process maps, ideated different designs and ideas, created prototypes, and conducted usability and heuristic evaluations to test our proposed solution.
User Research
During this phase, our goal was to achieve an understanding of the nature of the current system and the needs of our target audience. We conducted an organizational review to learn more about AGS’s current and future uses for process maps, conducted interview sessions to understand our users, and developed personas to guide future development. From these methods, we have outlined who our users are and the nature of current standard operating procedures and policies.
The guiding research question for our project is: How might we reduce LPs non-productive time by designing a digital application leveraging a just-in-time learning strategy?
Personas
Using our understanding of the AGS and GSA organization and findings from our interview sessions, we developed two primary personas, one new and one experienced Loss Prevention Specialist. These personas represent who we believe to be our primary target users. In them, we have expressed the major goals, motivations, and frustrations which will drive our design requirements.
Organizational Review and Challenges
The purpose of this organizational review was to understand the nature of the current process map system and develop a series of high level findings that can be referred to in future ideation sessions.
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Process maps are in PDF file format, which makes them difficult to navigate and decreases accessibility. PDF files are not responsive by nature and do not adapt to device size.
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Process maps display all conditional information, which may increase cognitive overload. Some process maps include many steps and external programs compared to others. Steps are not displayed or hidden based on conditional rules, rather, they are all displayed by default.
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Some process maps include many external links to programs and tools, which could decrease efficiency.
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It is difficult to understand progress and context using current process map navigation. Due to the lack of breadcrumb navigation, it is difficult for a user to understand where they are in the process map, as each subprocess link opens a new file. Also, there is no method for estimating time for completion.
Information Architecture
To create our information architecture (IA), we began by considering the major systems such as organizational, labeling, navigation, and search. We then looked at the pages and page states that reflect these systems, and then iteratively generated a site structure combining all of these components. We identified four primary views: a home page, a search results page, a process overview page, and a process detail page.
Ideation
As a group we reviewed our design requirements and decided that the form factor most appropriate for our solution would be a responsive web design that could be viewed on both laptop and mobile devices.
We generated early concepts for page layout and numerous instantiations of the systems we described in our information architecture. Pages shown here are: Home, overview, search, to-do, active process map, and some extra features.
Prototyping
My team and I created interactive prototypes using Figma. To work around the limitation of prototyping on static mockups, we created several versions of the detail pages to demonstrate varying points among a key path scenario. Then we connected each of the pages with the necessary links to create a functional prototype that mimicked how our system would function.
Hi-Fi Mockups
Based on findings from the usability tests and heuristic evaluations, we iterated our medium fidelity prototypes to create high fidelity mockups. Using our high fidelity mockups for reference we created a responsive web prototype. Our web prototype allows for a more realistic testing experience, as elements respond to user interaction and browser viewport changes. Included in the web prototype are the GSA process map homepage, search results page, and process map details page.
Home Page
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Choose Location:
Users can choose their location for contextual information
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Top Right Search Bar:
Search bar moved to top right for better visibility
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Distinct Filter Buttons:
Filter buttons visually distinct from process map links below
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Active Session:
Audits in progress will display in this section
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Bookmark Stars:
All process map links now include a star for quick bookmarking
Search Page
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Search Query now appears above results
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Filters on the Left: Filter box is now displayed as a sidebar on the left side of the page
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Status Information: Similar results display contextual information based on status
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Status Filter: Filter options now include displaying results by status
Details Page
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Bookmark Star: Users can bookmark directly from process map details page
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Breadcrumbs are more visually distinct and have been moved under the page title
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Resume Saved Audit: A prompt will appear for users if they have already started an audit
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Sidebar Progression: Sidebar sub-links track progression through audit
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Step Titles: Step titles now match corresponding sidebar titles
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Active steps display a green border
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Action Progression: Action buttons/links now track progression
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Add Details: Users can now expand on their decision point answers by adding a description, photo, video, or file
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Action Item Border: Left borders for action items now match color of "yes" or "no" decision point
Video
We created a video that walks through the life of a Loss Prevention Specialist at an Amazon Fulfillment Center. Below is my video storyboard and the final video production. We used Moovly to create the animations and Illustrator to create the icons and illustrations in the video.
