How Do Devices Move?
We dove into the world of product marketing and animation to find a better understanding for how our competitors bring hardware to life. We discovered not only that each industry-leading product line had a motion language, but that a handful of creative studios are responsible for the motion design that sets the standard. In order to elevate Amazon’s product imagery, we sought a bolder motion design direction that remained familiar to our current in-house device rendering.
Customer Feedback
Next, we needed input from our customers. Customers were shown current Amazon renderings as well as a handful of our competitors product renders and animation.
Customers strongly prefer animation that focuses on devices and their features
“Flavor” animations, technical demonstrations like audio visualization, and animated utterances perform significantly lower than device-centric animation
Animation is perceived the best when it tells a clear story about a specific feature of the device (materials, buttons, functionality, etc)
Speaker
Until now, Amazon devices had either lived in “on-white” or in photo-real contextual lifestyle environments. This expression explored metaphorically extending the sound features into the photo studio environment.
Multimodal
In this expression, I followed the customer’s requests to focus on the features; light and color are used to enhance features and also draw attention to the balance of privacy paired with personal product experiences.
The Result
Our deep exploration of competitor brand imagery and subsequent creative exploration created a primitive motion guideline for Device Brand Studio art directors to reference when engaging with vendors.
Credits:
Austin Hochstatter: Motion CD
Nathan Heal: Lifestyle CD
Joel Thomas: Motion Design
Justin Reed: Motion Design
Jason Diaz: Motion Design