Systems design
Manual device configuration and account creation ● Amazon Kindle
Kindles originally shipped pre-provisioned with a data plan and integrated with the user’s Amazon account. To reduce costs, second-generation Kindles were going to ship without any pre-configuration. To complicate matters, users could choose models with either data and WiFi capabilities or WiFi only.
During the requirements gathering process I found that PM and Dev had only considered the happiest of paths: the user turns on their Kindle, connects to their network of choice, and logs into their existing Amazon account. There had been no consideration of error states such as:
The Kindle battery was drained
There was no available network
The user didn’t have an existing Amazon account
My team and I created a systems flow diagram for the out-of-box-experience (OOBE) that anticipated—and provided solutions for—all identified error states.
