Book recommendations

Project Overview

Client: Amazon Books

Role: Senior Product Designer

Timeline: October 2021 – May 2023

Platform: Ecommerce Website & Mobile App

Goal: Improve the personalization and clarity of book recommendations using contextual metadata, editorial content, and user behavior.

Impact: Enhance trust and engagement with recommendation widgets using micro UX patterns and streamlined content integration.

The Challenge

  • Despite robust data science behind Amazon's book recommendations, users often perceived them as impersonal or irrelevant—leading to lower engagement and missed conversion opportunities.

  • The challenge was to earn trust by humanizing the book recommendations so they did not feel disconnected.

  • Design lightweight but meaningful UX interventions that make the UX/UI smarter, more transparent, and trustworthy.

My Role

I was the Lead Product Designer embedded on the Trusted Voices Team, where I:

  • Conducted UX audits of the Amazon Book Review, book detail page, and Goodreads to help personalize content without disrupting the shopping experience.

  • Worked cross-functionally with UX research, Amazon Editors, Goodreads Team, Product, and Dev.

  • Designed and tested micro interactions and content layouts that helped users understand an actual human was recommending this book.

Discovery & Insights

  • I worked with UX research to review customer feedback to identify where the lack of trust around recommendations is coming from.

  • Partnering with the Goodreads UX team to compare how they present similar content, and digest how their users perceive trust.

A key insight: users didn’t trust recommendations when there was no visible photo of a person or the context sounded like a machine.

Design Execution

  • Introduced an editorial blurb component to make book recommendations feel personal and trusted by including a photo and quotations.

  • Accessed content from the Amazon Book Review to populate the book recommendation blurbs.

  • Created a north star design pattern to include other human centered voices like authors, Kindle highlights, Goodreads, and more.

Outcomes

  • Supported long-term efforts to bridge Amazon’s e-commerce experience with Goodreads insights.

  • Leveraged Goodreads book recommendation reputation by adding Goodreads star ratings to book detail page to build Amazon book recommendation trust.

  • Created design road map for integrating other human voices into the book recommendation engine.

If I Had More Time...

I would have liked to see where the blurb card fit into the search, detail page, and thank you page, resulting in the growth of trust of human centered book recommendation.

Key Takeaway

Small UX interventions—when backed by user insight and executed thoughtfully—can have an large impact on how customers interact with your product.