Using microinteractions to make the Amazon App smoother — a UX case study

Simple micro-interactions to make the Amazon App a smoother and more interactive experience

We all know that Amazon’s User Experience is specifically designed to put the user in the condition and willing to buy. And that’s why we’re not here to discuss its visual design or UI interface elements, as they take up the original elements from the website and may have “dark patterns” behind it.

Instead, we only wanted to find out where the process that leads to the final purchase could be speeded up or made smoother by using some basic interactions that would not have been possible on a web browser.

We are Carolina Niglio, Fabrizio D’Onofrio and Emanuele Agosta and our challenge is to improve the overall flow and feeling of the app without turning upside-down the whole UX structure.

1 — Search bar

The research function in Amazon, as you might imagine, is fundamental. Experimenting it in the app, we noticed a very poor feedback: the elements remained pretty much the same, whilre simply reproducing some common movements the feedback for the user would have been much more significant. That could seem a little change, but every user, after a trigger, expect a feedback that is anticipated by the element that will be tapped. Now, when the user enters the search bar, the navigation bar goes up and some suggestions appear in a smooth way from the left. Moreover, a redundant repetition of the scan button has been removed.

2 — Product preview and quick actions

When a research is made, Amazon provides a lot of useful hints and information about the product without opening it in a single page. That’s why we thought about a feature for the ones that have already chosen the product and do not want to go through more steps. Also, in the…