Partner Connections: co-selling without the spreadsheets

The challenge

Partners were limited to who they already knew

Partners were already collaborating on the same opportunities, but over email, spreadsheets, word of mouth and the back of napkins. There was no shared view, no control over who saw what, and no way to find the partner with the skills you were missing.

How might we help partners:

• Discover the right partner for a specific opportunity or capability gap.
• Understand who to trust, and why, through clear profiles.
• Manage connections at scale, including approvals, restrictions and bulk actions.
• Navigate platform limitations without confusion or loss of trust.

My role

Lead UX designer and researcher, from partner interviews to QA at launch.

I interviewed partners and AWS partner managers, led early ideation with engineers in the room, tested and iterated with partners, contributed patterns to the AWS design system, and stayed through implementation so the interactions shipped as designed.

The approach

From silos to one trusted, shared view

1. 01

   Discovery

   Interviews with partners of different sizes, regions and industries to understand the need and how they like to work with AWS, plus internal interviews with partner managers to learn their language.

2. 02

   Early ideation and co-creation

   Early mocks with engineers involved from day one, so we worked through capability limits together instead of discovering them at build. In true Amazon style, a lot of doc reads.

3. 03

   Testing, iteration and approval

   User testing with partners, iterating on the flows, and adding new patterns to the AWS design system.

4. 04

   QA and launch

   I stayed with the team through implementation to make sure the UX came through and the interactions matched the designs.

Key features

What shipped

Results