AWS Activate
A new AWS platform to serve as the one-stop-shop to help all startups
I worked with product and engineering teams to understand AWS startup customers and build products and features that these users wanted.
Background
AWS Activate provides startups, including both smaller, early stage companies and more advanced digital businesses, with free tools and resources to quickly get started on AWS.
Activate Console
I worked with another UX designer on the AWS Activate Console, the home for AWS startup customers. In the console, startups have access to personalized tools and resources designed to support startups through every stage of their journey, from their initial idea, to building a MVP, to securing their first customer, to scaling their business on AWS and beyond.
The recommendation feed was personalized based on startups’ profiles, and its content could come from a wide range of AWS resources. The design needed to work with a few edge cases like long titles, empty summaries, missing thumbnails, etc. We also worked hard to minimize less important actions and allow the user to quickly access the recommendations.
Cost and Credit
Startups often ask for greater visibility into their AWS credit usage, balance and billing. I designed a cost and credit summary widget in the Activate Console to highlight their credits and balances, their current AWS spend, and a forecast of when their credits will likely run out. This information helps startups make informed decisions and maximize their AWS credits.
From receiving credits, using credits for AWS services, to credits expiration or exhaustion, a startup’s journey with AWS credits could encounter a number of events and decision points. Early in the design process I worked with product managers and the engineering team to understand and visualize the journey. This proved to be extremely helpful for developers to plan for implementation and unit testing.
As the extension of the widget, I designed a dashboard page to show details of credit usage, credit programs, service usage, and resources. Note this dashboard is not to replace AWS Cost Explorer, but rather to provide startups with easier access to critical credits and costs information.
Activate Customer Research
Interview Analysis
The first project I took on after joining the AWS Activate team was to analyze 80+ interview notes. Those interviews were previously done by product managers with startups from 8 countries. The interviews were about startup customers’ company information, startup experience, products, experiences and challenges with AWS, and expectations from AWS Activate.
I developed a detailed tagging system for highlighting important pieces of information in the interview notes.
After going through all the interview notes (a really time-consuming but worthwhile work), I did statistical analysis of the tags and used the insights to create personas and user stories. This customer research formed the empirical foundation for the Activate team to make product and design decisions.
Research Repository
I owned customer interviews after the first 80+ interviews by product managers, and I conducted weekly interviews with startups around the world during the time I was in the team. I shared insights from interviews through an internal email newsletter, but I also wanted a centralized place where team members and stakeholders could search and browse all the insights.
With my knowledge of Gatsby.js, I built an internal static site to curate interview notes and share research knowledge with other AWS startup teams. This internal research repository became popular for facilitating discussions and collaborations, and in a few cases, it reduced the need of new customer research.
Tech Hub
Tech Hub is another part of the Activate Console that I worked on. Startups can find real-time updates on the health of their AWS environment, new support services to explore, and a direct route to opening support cases. Similar to cost and credit summary, Tech Hub does not replace existing AWS services and tools, rather it helps startups quickly design, build and optimize their environment, whether a startup is just getting started or already building on AWS.
Activate Support Chat
As thousands of startups join AWS Activate every month, the team struggled to provide fast and customized support. I worked with a small engineering team as the designer on an automated chatbot. The chatbot provided quick responses to the most common support cases (62% of total cases).
Partner Portal
Investors and startup-enabling organizations (think Y Combinator) partner with AWS Activate to provide benefits for startups in their portfolios. I designed a web app to help those users track application status and promote AWS Activate benefits. The design followed a mobile-first approach and was intended to be implemented as a progressive web app, since many investors were constantly on the go.
