Design Operations

Building a Design Program from the Ground Up

Overview

Zoox (a subsidiary of Amazon) is an autonomous vehicle that uses AI and sensory technology to self-drive. While at Zoox, I was a Design Program Manager assigned to the Sound Lab team.

Objective

The Sound Lab team had 3 main initiatives:

• Sonic Brand Identity - defining what Zoox sounds like in brand and marketing materials)

• Human Interaction Design - using sound in UX designs that help pedestrians and riders interact with an autonomous vehicle aka no driver

• Audio Integration - ensure human interaction designs are technical integrated in vehicle software, firmware, and hardware

Because of the team's wide-ranging set of initiatives, we interacted with many, cross-functional stakeholders which meant disparate project tracking.

Impact

I was hired as the first Design Program Manager to help the Sound Lab team get organized. I started by building a centralized program hub where all initiatives could be viewed, no matter the team discipline they were associated with. This began in Jira but I noticed my team did not like the interface so I moved the system to Asana (pictured below).