Commenting experience in Amazon Communities
A core usability area that enables users to get the full value from community engagements
The Challenge
Post discussions are a hallmark of Amazon Global Communities, an online forum that fosters networking, knowledge-sharing, and feedback mechanisms among strategic partners within Amazon's supply chain, including Amazon Freight Partners and Delivery Service Partners.
However, it is challenging to follow the flow of highly active discussions. This leads to members either spending excessive time trying to understand the conversation, or disengaging due to the effort required. Poor commenting experience consistently ranks among the top usability issues highlighted by users.
The Objective
Empower members to maximize the value of community engagement by making it easier to read and participate in post discussions.
Role
Lead UX designer
Duration
2 months from initial research to design handoff
Team
4 project team members including designer, product owner, engineer, and data analyst
Opportunity Statement
How Might We empower members to maximize the value of community engagement by making it easier to read and participate in post discussions?
What insights do we have about customers?
The Comments section currently uses a flat visual framework while functionally simulating an infinite nested structure via the "show replies" feature. While power users can learn the hybrid structure, it takes time to comb through a long series of cascading replies, leading to frustration for many users.
Additionally, there are several usability issues with the current experience. For instance, when a user replies to a comment, the system automatically scrolls to the bottom of the thread, causing them to lose their place in the conversation.
Below: Community member expressing frustration about usability issues
Below: Real footage of a user struggling with the navigation in comments
Identifying patterns in structured discussions
Flat structured
Infinite threaded
Capped threaded
Teased capped threaded
Design ideation
Based on the benchmarking analysis and our community use cases, we settled on a teased threaded structure, because it would:
1. Improve users' ability to quickly understand conversation flow by providing a clear structure with first-level comments guiding second-level replies.
2. Offer the necessary nuance and complexity through nesting limits and partially hidden replies.
3. Provide the quickest tech implementation compared to alternative options.
4. Allow for future expansion to desired frameworks like infinitely nested comments, up/downvote, and Q/A.
I began the design ideation by mapping out the high-level structure and section layout. Then, I focused on refined design decisions, such as visual indicators to clearly distinguish between comments, @mentions, replies, and quotes.
Below: Low-fidelity wireframes for basic layout and design options
🌟 Design handoff
Just as I was preparing to wrap up the project, there were major changes to the sales compensation structure. Instead of measuring at domestic and international levels, the new structure required detailed measurement at the service level (FedEx Express, Ground, Freight, etc.). The design needed to be flexible to accommodate these changes.
The "Gap to Goal" page
The final iteration offers intuitive data visualization of sales compensation categories. Users can select reporting periods (Forecast vs. Actual) for comparing current and historical data. This allows them to:
- Quickly assess progress towards quarterly goals
- Identify revenue gaps by category
- Leverage closed/won opportunities to close these gaps.
The Customer List provides a quick snapshot of customer information, empowering Sales to prioritize selling activities and focus on high-priority customers. They can also take swift actions like scheduling calls and creating opportunities.
Measuring success
Average unique users per day
112K
Total users per month
Time saved on rendering reports
In their own words
Christie
Field Sales in US
This Dashboard will absolutely and definitely help me prepare for the call!!! I like being able to compare Revenue and Volume in one. I like the breakdown of services as well. One customer I looked at had express freight volume and I didn’t know they ship express freight!
Samuel
Business Sales
This dashboard will help me determine my focus for the week. This includes my gainers/decliners, etc. without me doing any extra work!
Maisa
Field Sales in Canada
A great tool to use for a quick check before we go into sales calls or for quick business reviews. It provides a good insight as well if we are covering for another Account Executive so we can quickly have a better shipping profile.
Nick
Field Sales in UK
The dashboard in itself is very good so great work to all involved – it's this type of feature that really makes the CRM better and more efficient for Sales, so thank you.