We interviewed Barun Kwak, UX Designer at Amazon, about her background in design. She began her journey with Amazon as a UX design intern and returned after graduating to the same team, where she has stayed ever since. As a designer, she has worked on several projects, including Alexa, Thank My Driver; which she talks about below!
Tell us about your background and how it led you to a career in design.
🎤 I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a double major in Human Computer Interaction and Business. I remember doing a conversational UI project in one of my studio classes thinking, “When will I ever use this in real life?” Little did I know that I’d be doing conversational design in almost every project I’ve been involved with at Amazon since starting here.
What does your design team do at Amazon?
🎤 Our design team crafts experiences for Alexa to become customers’ go-to shopping companion. We envision Alexa helping you through each step of the shopping journey, like discovery and purchasing. We work with pretty much any device you can invoke Alexa, such as mobile, Echo Show, FireTV, and more. A couple of examples you can try right now are “Alexa, add avocado to my Shopping List,” or “Alexa, reorder coffee beans.”
Tell us your favorite part about designing "Alexa, Thank My Driver”.
🎤 My favorite part about designing this feature was leaning into the holiday spirit of giving. As a customer, we are usually on the receiving end of getting packages from drivers, so it’s awesome to give appreciation to them during an especially busy time for them. I recognize that this is a rare opportunity to do something purely to celebrate drivers, and I felt so lucky to be working on this with the best partners — Naseema, Lily, Annie, Josh, and Ellen.
Do you have any side explorations or hobbies?
🎤 Too many :) Finding the best sushi place in NYC, snowboarding, marathon training, playing with my sister’s dog Frankie, illustration, and film photography.
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