The Challenge

Amazon Prime Video offers a vast library, but its user experience is often marred by a confusing relationship with the broader Amazon ecosystem. The goal of this project was to audit the subscription and cancellation flows to identify "friction points" and "dark patterns" that lead to user frustration and "click fatigue."

The Problem (The "Why")

Through user research and benchmarking, we identified several critical issues:

• Confusion between Services: Users struggle to distinguish between Prime Video and Amazon Prime, leading to uncertainty about what they are paying for.

• Emotional Manipulation (Confirmshaming): The interface uses language designed to make users feel guilty or confused when trying to cancel.

• High Friction: Users are constantly redirected to the main Amazon retail site for account management, breaking the streaming experience.

• Lack of Transparency: It is often unclear which content is included in the subscription versus what requires additional payment/rental.

Research & Insights

The project involved a deep dive into the User Journey, identifying key emotional triggers:

• The "Alice" Journey: A storyboard approach followed a user (Alice) who, exhausted after work, faces "decision paralysis" due to a generic homepage and complex subscription prompts.

• Key Finding: Users feel a sense of "insecurity" regarding automatic renewals and the forced use of credit cards without clear expiration alerts.

Functional Benchmarking

I conducted a competitive analysis comparing Prime Video with its main rivals (Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max) focusing on:

• Subscription Flow: How competitors simplify the entry point.

• Cancellation Clarity: Identifying how "Dark Patterns" in Prime Video compare to the more transparent "one-click" cancellation models of competitors.

Strategic Solutions

• De-cluttering the Interface: Proposals to separate retail-specific notifications from the entertainment experience.

• Transparency First: Redesigning the "Subscription Status" page to clearly state what is included, reducing the "hidden cost" anxiety.

• Simplified Flow: Reducing the "click fatigue" by allowing in-app management without redirecting to the external Amazon browser.