Cloudscape design system

Amazon Web Services

FOCUS

UX, Visual, Information architecture

ROLE

UX lead, researcher

TEAM

  • 2-6 UX designers
  • 1 visual designer
  • 1 Design technologist
  • 1 UX researcher
  • 10+ developers

Amazon Web Services is the largest cloud computing provider, giving anyone or company, access to on-demand and flexible IT resources to build all things on the internet. Whenever you shop, stream a show, or even file your taxes online, these websites are most likely powered by AWS. Using AWS requires leveraging many segregated tools. I spent 4 years establishing the visual language and major CX guidelines across all AWS product experiences including the AWS Management console, IDEs, mobile applications, and documentation.

Context

In 2016, AWS had over 100 services, each built separately and with no consistency. Notably, there were at least 4 visual styles scattered on the AWS Management Console alone, making it unintuitive and confusing for customers. The designers, developers, and business owners building these services were just as frustrated — building their next service in the dark without any centralized UX/CX guidance or dev tools. The AWS Design system, Cloudscape, was built to address this frustration and unify all AWS experiences including the AWS Management Console, mobile apps, IDEs, and help documentation.

GOAL

As an early supporter of the design system, I designed and established the foundations and components of the system. That included facilitating its adoption across AWS with over 200 development teams, advocating for a high bar for accessibility and usability across AWS experiences.

Documentation

To drive adoption, I wrote extensive documentation to share with teams and only saw a project complete when the work was live on the documentation website. Check out the open-source library (a slimmed down version).

Impact

A lot of research, iterations, tests, and love went into developing Cloudspace and to keep pace with the rapid development that happens at AWS. So much so that by the end of my support, Cloudscape had:

97%

adoption across the AWS Management Console

400+

dev years saved with React component library

78+

design years saved for console ideations

2.5

versions

119

patterns/components

30

demos

12

design foundations

4

visual modes

1

open source library

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