Thinking beyond
the QR code
Amazon, the world’s largest seller, is in a unique position to pioneer how people shop on their televisions.
Over the last decade, televisions have continued to get smarter and smarter, but the advertisements we see on them have stayed pretty dumb. With most TVs now connected to the internet, and some even having digital assistants of their own, Amazon saw an opportunity to think bigger, and asked us to design a future vision to demonstrate the creative potential of interactive television ads.
Over several months, we designed a foundational framework and over 80 concepts for how that framework could extend to all kinds of products and services.
Role
Design Director
Project Length
3 months
Year
2020-2021
Research & strategy
During discovery, we saw that few ads were doing anything beyond displaying a QR code, which require users have their phone’s ready at all times. We felt the TV watching context offered a great opportunity to showcase Alexa’s voice interactions to build a seamless, lean-back experience.
We discussed this, and more of our discovery findings during a workshop with the team, solidifying our strategy and aligning on a visual direction before diving in.
Design exploration
We went broad when exploring concepts, and crafted storyboards to flesh out those we felt particularly exciting and novel. We also explored ways to elevate the visual design of the Alexa TV experience with moodboards and visual sketches.
A scalable framework
Our system needed to be flexible enough to work with everything from cheap consumables to expensive cars to tax services. It also needed to work alongside existing creative, as well as ads that were purpose-built for interactivity.
The base experience has Alexa sitting alongside existing ad creative, indicating that interaction is possible, and providing a dedicated space for it with a stylized end card.
Deeper engagement
The base framework sets up a consistent model for user engagement by keeping the interaction point consistent while tailoring the available actions to the specific ad.
Cheap items that you’ve bought before can be immediately added to your cart. Expensive items or services can offer quick product tours and demos directly from the ad during a single commercial break.
Saving for later
I think a few things are pretty obvious: most people tune out during ad breaks, and most people don’t want to make ad breaks even longer by interacting with them.
Ads need to provide a compelling reason to engage, so we crafted several unique, app-like experiences to show how brands could go beyond the basics. Users can also save these for later to revisit on their own time, across any device.
Going to market
Concept testing showed there was plenty of potential in these ideas and, with the help of a detailed overview presentation, our client was getting a lot of internal support to continue the work. They eventually fast-tracked the development, and you can see the beginnings of these concepts on Amazon Prime Video.
86
Unique concepts
16
Brand experiences
3
Form factors
