Amazon Go Green
Written by Lena Emara, Cynthia Wong, Joleen Hsu, Mai Moua Vang, and Vanessa Alvarado
Update: This case study was selected as the Season 1 runner-up for the Productdesign.tips challenge.
As part of the Design Challenge from productdesign.tips, our team came together to find ways for Amazon to encourage more sustainability on their e-commerce platform. As with any unsolicited design project, the challenge comes with a lack of access to application analytics and technical feasibilities. Nonetheless, the question remains: How might we design checkout screens for an e-commerce app to help people recycle the goods they buy?
Five UX Designers (Lena Emara, Cynthia Wong, Joleen Hsu, Mai Moua Vang, and Vanessa Alvarado)
4-week Sprint (August 2020)
Figma, Google Docs, Trello
Our team chose Amazon as the retailer for our challenge due to the largest potential for customer reach. Amazon is the largest e-commerce retailer in the world with over 197 million users on their platform each month. As with any company that holds such a sizable market share, they face growing pressures to implement better environmental practices to offset their carbon footprint. In the last few years, Amazon has voiced their increasing commitment to sustainability: from their operations and supply chain down to their packaging. How might we tap into their customer base and implement ways to promote sustainability on a larger scale?
As our team began to conduct some preliminary market research, we uncovered some interesting statistics:
Sustainable shoppers in the U.S. tend to be well-educated young ‘transitionals’ who live in smaller households and live in urban cities.
Consumers with a mindset and lifestyle focused on health and sustainability are 67% more likely to be digitally engaged, and 22% more likely to shop on a handheld device.
For major brands, developing and reporting on sustainability goals around their practices is no longer optional. Consumers expect some degree of transparency.
We also looked at other retailers to see what practices they were implementing to promote sustainability. Most of these companies had recycling programs, allowing customers to bring in used items.
To better understand user needs and pain points, we conducted five interviews with Amazon users. We asked questions around their shopping experience on Amazon, their views on sustainability, and what they do with products after their lifetime use.
Based on our research, we found three key insights. Most of our interviewees:
We were able to develop a cohesive narrative for our key persona, Michelle — a Marketing Manager based in Austin, Texas.
Based on our user research synthesis, we were able to confirm that most Amazon shoppers did not purchase clothing, but bought household or body products that came in a variety of plastic bottles. Also, many Amazon shoppers did not recycle those bottles because of inconvenience or the uncertainties around recycling eligibility. Did you know — only 1 in 5 people consistently recycle items from the bathroom?
Therefore, the key challenge statement was: How might we design checkout screens to educate Amazon shoppers about items that are eligible for recycling and incentivize them to recycle?
Once we defined our How Might We statement, we were ready to create a user journey map for our persona in order to better understand her needs and pain points. In the scenario below, Michelle is ordering a bottle of shampoo from the Amazon app and discovers their recycling initiative, Amazon Go Green. Since we recognized the inconvenience that customers face when they are left to recycle on their own, the goal for Amazon Go Green would be to collect bottled products from customers in exchange for Amazon points, which can be redeemed for rewards. In this exercise, we are able to delve into Michelle’s feelings, motivations, and emotions throughout each touchpoint in her journey.
While analyzing each of the interactions, the following insights were used as references to help guide us through our research planning. We needed to design a:
Once we gathered enough insights from our user journey map, we were ready to map out a couple of user flows that would illustrate the two main tasks our users would need to accomplish.
In our first scenario, Michelle is purchasing a bottle of shampoo and discovers the Go Green program for the first time. With our user journey map still fresh in our mind, we were able to map out the flow with all of the pages necessary for Michelle to successfully accomplish the task at hand. This is when we were able to visualize and consider all possible turning points.
In our second scenario, Michelle receives a reminder that tells her to recycle her bottle of shampoo, so she launches the app and sees what her next steps are. This was the point where we needed to establish a simple and feasible way for a user to feel incentivized to recycle a product. Our solution was for Michelle to be able to view her points, see the rewards she could get from recycling and then obtain a QR code for when she goes to the desired drop-off location.
Based on the user flows, our team conducted a Crazy 8 Ideation and selected four features from our sketches that would best solve the challenge statement.
The new logo would retain Amazon’s branding and remain simple. We thought the additional smile over the logo captured the essence of the recycling program.
2. A “How it works” page to clearly state the process and explain the impact
Based on all of our interviewees, they agreed Amazon’s return process was easy. The steps had some similarities to what Amazon customers are familiar with, so incorporating recycling would be feasible with their existing shopping habit.
3. A reminder to help users with memorability
We thought it would be best to have a reminder to set the date to recycle, placed on the cart screen. We also discussed there should be another place in the app where the customer can change the date to recycle after the product is purchased.
4. A recycling program section so Michelle can track her rewards and the impact she has been able to contribute to
This screen would capture reward points already earned and currently pending to recycle. We thought this page could be the initial place to start the recycling process back to Amazon.
After finalizing the user flows and wireframes, our team started building the high-fidelity designs for the features of the Go Green program. Our goal was simple: build a seamless flow that would guide the user to learn more about the new program and encourage them to recycle used bottles.
After we finalized the prototype, we designed an unmoderated usability test for 15 users on Maze. We came up with a usability testing plan that would allow us to test the main features of the Go Green Program and their integration into Amazon’s current interface.
Test Objectives:
Test Subject: High-fidelity prototype of Amazon app (mobile version)
Test Methodology: Unmoderated Remote User Testing
Participants: 10-15 Amazon shoppers between ages 21–35
Tasks:
Scenario 1 — Imagine that Amazon has launched a new recycling program called Go Green, which encourages you to recycle plastics you purchase from their website. How would you learn more about Amazon’s Go Green Program & add the eligible item to your cart?
Scenario 2 — Now that you’ve purchased an Amazon Go Green eligible item, you want to check your rewards status and see how to return your items. How would you do that?
Usability Goals:
Test Completion Rate: 100% as the design provides users the ability to perform the task and the participants will be familiar with using Amazon
Error-free Rate: 80% of users will complete without errors
Using Maze, we were able to recruit 15 participants to complete the usability test.
According to the heatmaps, testers were able to identify the “Amazon Go Green” label that would provide more information about the program.
There was confusion regarding the second task, mostly regarding the buttons on the rewards page, the initial flow of recycling the product, and the wording of the tabs of relevant products that have been purchased.
Revisit the design and make the following changes based on user feedback:
We focused on revitalizing the Go Green program by reallocating certain buttons and giving the program a section of its own, similar to Amazon’s Fresh. This would make it easier for users to navigate the recycling program and track rewards, ultimately helping to distinguish it from the rest of the platform.
This design challenge allowed us to think more deeply about sustainable practices and how it can be better integrated in e-commerce apps, particularly with a large retailer such as Amazon.
Throughout our design process, we learned two key things:
If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for reading our case study! If anyone from Amazon is reading this, feel free to give us a call ;)