Year
2023
Organization
Role
Senior Design Technologist at Amazon Ads
Team
- Joe Brust, Sr. Design Technologist
- Allan Bathurst, Manager
- Kate Kemp, Creative Director
- Nick Fritz, Product Manager
- Becca Breasher, Program Manager
BirdsEye is an Amazon Ads internal calendar and ticketing system that enables real-time reservation, scheduling, and management of time-sensitive bookings.
Built from the ground up in collaboration with another design technologist, BirdsEye supports Amazon's Homepage Hero and On-Package Advertising programs, replacing a previously disjointed system of email chains, Slack messages, Salesforce tickets, and manually managed spreadsheets. With BirdsEye, approval workflows, request tracking, and inventory management are consolidated in a single tool.
Design process
From ideation through design and development, BirdsEye was shaped by proactive user research and built out through user flow, wireframe, and prototyping processes. User interviews, usability testing, and ongoing feedback loops were utilized to ensure the BirdsEye addresses the varied requirements of its worldwide stakeholders.
Architecture design
I led the design of the extensible framework and architecture that enables BirdsEye to be tailored to support specific advertising program needs across Amazon.
Programs are designed to be highly customizable—each defining supported locales, team and user permissions, ticket types with custom fields and approval processes, calendar and inventory management settings, and more. This flexibility allows application updates and new features to reach all users across programs and enables BirdEye to support new programs and use cases in the future.
Scott's super power is taking a complex problem and breaking down into actionable pieces in order to deliver results for stakeholders. When creating internal products such as INSITU and Birdseye, Scott was able to take the ambiguous requirements given to him by stakeholders and create a simple solution that solved the problem and reduced workload.
BirdsEye stakeholder
Component library
The rapid development of BirdsEye’s UI was made possible by the reusable component library our team established while developing previous internal tools, INSITU and Arc. And in turn, BirdsEye allowed us to build upon and enhance this library significantly.
The library grew from basic inputs and UI components (buttons, text inputs, drop-down select menus, modals, etc) to support a wide range of more complex interaction patterns such as date and time editing, a responsive grid layout, drag-and-drop reorderable lists, nested navigation and action menus, rich text area inputs with Markdown and user-mentioning support—all supporting a unified visual language and consistent user experience.
Everything is clear, it removes ambiguity and makes the process very easy. The form is simple to follow and asking the right questions, not more or less, so I am really liking it.
Account Executive
Calendar
The calendar serves as the core of BirdsEye, offering a single-source-of-truth for critical dates like booked ad slots, blocked dates, and campaign launch timelines—ensuring teams stay informed and aligned.
BirdsEye's calendar was built around an infinite-scroll interface with each week expanding to accommodate any number of items. Users can fine-tune their calendar view using ticket filter controls as well as preview ticket details in a side panel without navigating away from the calendar.
Approval workflows
Approval workflows in BirdsEye were implemented to streamline previously complex multi-team approval processes.
Tickets move through a customizable series of steps that simplify collaboration, knowledge sharing, and approvals across disparate global teams. Approval workflows simplify collaboration by automatically notifying stakeholders of needed actions, whether it's providing an approval, uploading file attachments, or filling in ticket details. Each step provides simple directions on what action needs to be taken and by whom, and a timeline of completed ticket actions is maintained to allow processes to be audited and improved over time.
Inventory & reporting
BirdsEye's inventory management provides a comprehensive overview of tickets by year and month, enabling teams to track inventory/allocation and extract valuable insights.
Program admins can set monthly allocation caps based on custom criteria such as total volume or number of booked dates. When relevant ticket fields are filled out, users are provided simple inline warnings if their request exceeds available inventory, helping users make informed decisions during both the ticket creation and approval stages. Additionally, program admins can download reports detailing yearly ticket activity.
Impact
Since its launch in Q4 of 2022, BirdsEye has expanded to support three programs across seven global markets (United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom), processing over 2,000 time-sensitive requests with greater efficiency.
Currently, roughly 300 active users per month leverage BirdsEye, reducing request processing time by an estimated 70% compared to previous processes.
The launch of Birdseye was among the most professional and buttoned-up product launches I've seen at Amazon. ... Joe, Scott and Kate were customer-focused every step of the way, from learning about our needs and existing SOPs, to sharing out design mocks, conducting demos on beta versions, and managing the transition to a launched V1 product ... [They] maintain the highest bar in the work and are a model of effectiveness and customer-focus.
BirdsEye stakeholder