Rufus AI

Project Summary

Ever had to scroll through a long list of product reviews to find the answer to your question about a product? Or spent time scrolling through the product page just to figure out what the dimensions of a product are? Have you ever had to jump from article to article on Google just to figure out what gift you should get for your mom? These are just a few customer frustrations we hoped to solve with our new experience.

In March of 2023, I joined a new AI team at Amazon as the first designer. The team was brought together to develop a new conversational AI for the Amazon app. My role as a Senior UX Designer was to lead our development of core conversational components, interaction mechanics, the first-time user experience, and several other initiatives. After a lot of hard work and trial and error, we announced Rufus to the world in February of 2024.

Rufus is an expert shopping assistant trained on Amazon’s product catalog and information from across the web to answer customer questions on shopping needs, products, and comparisons, make recommendations based on this context, and facilitate product discovery in the same Amazon shopping experience customers use regularly.

‍Results‍

We started with a simple invite-only beta and slowly expanded out to larger and larger groups of customers. We evaluated as we went and gathered feedback from customers. We expect to constantly iterate and improve. Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, announced Rufus in an earnings call in February of 2024. Since then, the experience has received positive reviews in many publications including Axios, Bloomberg, CNBC, The New York Times, Wallstreet Journal, and many others. In summer of 2024, we expanded to all US Amazon customers. Want to know more about this project?

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