“Thank you for the design framework workshop. We were able to reach alignment across teams and share the same vision, the result of explorative exercise will produce guidance that not only will this help us move fast, it’ll also ensure we meet all the best practices.” — Amazon Games Software Engineer
Amazon Games published a variety of fun and exciting MMOs from New World and Lost Ark to Blue Protocol and Throne & Liberty. In order for player’s to keep track of their progress on a variety of game consoles, the Amazon Games iD was created (Currently serving ~1.4 million users worldwide). Similar to Battlenet ID, the Amazon Games iD keeps track of gaming progress, purchases and in-game content.
Interaction Design
Several different scenarios were accounted for in this experience from player account ages (Child, Teen, Adult, Family Manager) to other implemented 3P gaming services.
Design System Workshop
As the UX lead, I facilitated a workshop between UX and Engineering to iterate upon the current Design System for this and other Amazon Games experiences. This resulted in concrete next steps for UX and Engineering with clear tenets to follow.
Players who sign up for an Amazon Games iD account (aka AGiD) can enjoy a plethora of benefits to include cross progression on Amazon Games titles, utilizing purchased items on one gaming platform and transferring to other gaming platforms and receiving communications for news and in-game events directly from Amazon Games.
As Lead Designer for the AGiD experience, I was tasked with prepping the experience for launch in April 2024. This including tracking all Happy path scenarios, edge cases and error states flows for the entire experience (which totaled to over 150) and building out each flow to review with Engineering, Legal and leadership. There was very heavy collaboration with the Engineering team to balance a seamless experience with development feasibility.
In addition, I was tasked with fully fleshing out and designing the Child and Family experience. Players under 18 do not have as many options as adults gamers when it comes to online gaming and when they do, they have to be paired with an adult to create an account. Our goal was to create a frictionless AGiD sign up experience where children were able to quickly set up an account, gain consent from a parent and continue to playing whilst a parent could quickly set up parental controls and have clear visibility into what was allowed and restricted for each of their children’s accounts.
I worked with the Product Owner to iterate on their proposed wireframe for the Child and Family experience to find a solution for the following questions:
- How might child players go through an AGiD sign up that is quick, easy to understand at their reading level and does not cause the child to lose excitement for the game they want to play?
- How might parents create an AGiD for their child where they easily verify themselves, have high visibility into their child’s account and feel in control of their children’s gaming actions?
This effort took over a year of iteration between legal, security and leadership reviews. The end result launched April 2024 where players were introduced to the Amazon Games iD experience (Particularly through a THRONE AND LIBERTY marketing event where they received free loot for creating and linking accounts). As of today, the experience has around 1.4 million players worldwide.
Since this experience was new and a part of many other Amazon Games service experiences, a new Design Language system needed to be implemented. As lead facilitator on the team, I designed a workshop and facilitated it with both the UX team and the Engineering team to complete the following success measures:
- Aligning on what components to prioritize for our Amazon Games iD Design System
- Determining the shape of the deliverables
- Creating and aligning on a set of tenets to guide the Design System philosophy
- Determine next steps and timelines for deliverables
Check out id.amazongames.com to see the experience live.
