Centralized career development tool
Transforming career development journey by unifying Career Choice tuition benefit program for external schools and 17+ fragmented Amazon educational programs into a comprehensive experience for 1M+ Amazon employees
Customers + Impact
Upskilling marketplace serving 1M+ hourly employees
Role:
Leadership interfacing, User research, Concepts and Visual design, Interaction design, Prototyping
Timeframe
5 months
🕵🏻♀️ Understanding the problem
Customers:
Hourly employees who want to advance their careers feel lost – from how to search for and evaluate their options, to how to apply and be selected. This lost and ignored feeling can ignite employee relations risks and leave hourly employees with the impression that there’s no future for them at Amazon, resulting in resignations.
Employees had to hunt across disconnected websites and tools to piece together a fragmented picture of 17+ upskilling programs, with no single place to explore what was available to them.
Majority of opportunities were invisible as most employees only knew about programs they had seen on a break room flyer or heard about by chance.
82% were interested in building careers at Amazon but lacked clear pathways
36% of voluntary exits citing lack of career advancement opportunities
60% of departing associates didn't talk to anyone and didn't explore other internal opportunities before leaving the company
Business Point of view:
As a tuition benefit program that pays for external schools and colleges, the existing Career Choice had strong brand recognition among Amazon's hourly workforce. Leadership feared that placing it in one unified experience alongside 17 other Amazon-run upskilling programs would dilute Career Choice's distinct value proposition and confuse employees about the fundamental difference between a tuition benefit and direct training programs.
My contribution: Recognizing that the fragmentation was hurting the very employees Amazon wanted to retain, I advocated for a unified experience when Career Choice stakeholders pushed back, and facilitated a workshop to find a solution that honored Career Choice's distinct identity while bringing all programs under one roof.
Vision
Empower Amazon's 1M+ hourly associates to take control of their career growth through a unified, mobile-first upskilling marketplace that transforms fragmented training resources into a personalized, accessible pathway to advancement—reducing voluntary exits and supporting Amazon's commitment to Amazon's Upskilling 2025 pledge.
Before
Programs scattered across many websites
Career Choice was well known and visible, but that visibility came at a cost. Lot of employees assumed it was the only career development option available to them. The remaining programs were buried across disjointed websites and even hidden within a job board, effectively invisible to the people who needed them most. Many employees had no idea what opportunities existed beyond what they had seen on a break room flyer.
🛠️ Solving the problem
Unifying the experience required solving two interconnected challenges at once: creating a single destination for all upskilling opportunities, while preserving the integrity of Career Choice as a keystone program.
Stakeholder alignment
Career Choice stakeholders feared that placing their program alongside 17 others would make it feel like just another option, diluting its distinct value. Rather than pushing back on opinion, we facilitated a focused workshop to surface shared goals and reframe the challenge.
The turning point came from user testing our design proposal with an intentional mix of existing Career Choice customers and those unfamiliar with the program to gauge discoverability and differentiation. Participants who already knew Career Choice had no trouble identifying and selecting it within the unified catalog. It didn't disappear. And users who didn't qualify for Career Choice discovered programs they could actually access, opportunities they had never known existed.
After drafting our first design proposal, we conducted an in-person user testing with an intentional mix of existing Career Choice customers and those unfamiliar with the program to gauge discoverability and differentiation.
I advocated for a unified experience with program stakeholders and conducted and worked to develop a cohesive solution addressing brand preservation while providing one destination for all options.
The resulting design maintained Career Choice's distinct identity within the broader ecosystem.
The result
Career Choice retained its distinct identity within the broader ecosystem, and the unified experience gave every employee a real starting point for career growth regardless of which programs they qualified for.
Design
1. Exploring by program
Program catalog: all offerings surfaced in one place, browsable by program or area of interest
Program cards: digestible overviews including application cycles and prerequisites for quick evaluation
Side-by-side comparison: reduces cognitive load when weighing multiple programs
Program detail page: surfaces every available career pathway covered by that program
2a. Exploring by area of interest (Healthcare, covered by Career Choice) and viewing partner schools
Employees can explore opportunities through the lens of what they care about, not just what programs exist. Some areas of interest are only covered by Career Choice. In this example user explores Medical assistant career within Healthcare.
Areas of interest: only categories covered by available Amazon programs are surfaced, keeping options relevant and actionable
Interest detail page: includes an industry description and a full list of careers available within it, along with which program covers them
Career detail page: surfaces all available partner schools (as Healthcare is only covered by Career Choice tuition program)
School detail page: for tuition-covered careers, employees can view school details, and initiate the application or tuition request directly from the page
2b. Exploring by area of interest (Technology)
Most areas of interest are covered by multiple programs
Areas of interest: only categories covered by available Amazon programs are surfaced, keeping options relevant and actionable
Interest detail page: includes an industry description and a full list of careers available within it, along with programs that covers them
Career detail page: in this example, user selected Software development by Amazon technical academy, thus is shown training detail page directly, where they can initiate their application
Program detail page: user can further explore what else this program offers
Customer quotes
“I think this is going to be really helpful for someone who may have stepped into the Amazon world and not realize how much there is to help you grow further.”
“Sometimes I don’t know what I want. Answer all these questions and it tells me what I might be good at—that’s neat.”
🕵🏻♀️ User research and feedback
We conducted usability tests with hourly associates to evaluate the new experience of all upskilling programs in a single, browsable catalog. Participants were split evenly between general associates and those already familiar with Career Choice.
Biggest takeaway
Discovery is easy when options are organized, but confidence comes from clarity. The new upskilling hub succeeds at surfacing opportunities, but users make decisions only when programs clearly communicate what they are, who they’re for, what they lead to, and when users can act. Features that reduce uncertainty like clear descriptions, comparison tools, guided recommendations and visible deadlines, have the highest impact on engagement and trust.
A unified catalog adds clear value: Users were enthusiastic about having one place to explore career opportunities, which increased awareness, reduced cognitive load, and supported both exploratory and goal-driven behavior.
Clarity drives confidence: While navigation was generally successful, ambiguous labels and unclear content (acronyms, program names, outcomes, and timing) created friction and uncertainty.
Interest-based browsing works best: Users strongly preferred exploring by areas of interest, relied on program card descriptions to orient themselves, and viewed the Compare feature as essential—though it needs stronger visual prominence.
Decision-making is constraint-driven: Eligibility, format, time commitment, deadlines, and location were primary factors, and users wanted visibility into when closed programs would reopen rather than alternative suggestions.
Guidance is a key opportunity: High interest in quizzes, coaching, and “day in the life” content highlights the need for more personalized, guided pathways—not just more options.