Amazon Smart Vehicles / Vega OS

Multi-modal entertainment for the car.

Led interaction design for video and entertainment applications on Amazon's in-vehicle infotainment platform — balancing voice, touch, D-pad, safety constraints, and OEM theming.

Role

Lead Product Designer

Team

DM · PM · 7 designers

Timeline

2024 – 2025

View Figma prototype SDK debut: 80K+ viewers

The context

Designing for drivers, not desktops.

In-car entertainment is not streaming on a different screen. Attention is split between the road, passengers, and the infotainment system. Every interaction needs to be glanceable, recoverable, and safe.

Shilpy's challenge was to make voice, touch, and D-pad feel like one coherent system while preserving Amazon design standards and OEM partner requirements.

Senior design decisions

The work was less about screens and more about a shared interaction model.

Constraint

The same entertainment experience had to work across touch, D-pad, and Alexa without splitting the user’s mental model.

Design decision

Treat focus, recovery, and navigation feedback as system rules first — then apply them consistently to each screen.

Tradeoff

Preserve glanceability and OEM flexibility even when it meant simplifying visible controls or reducing interaction density.

Collaboration

Cross-functional by design.

Research

A/B tested permission workflows in car-simulated environments.

Alexa Voice

Defined voice-first interaction rules across OEM partner contexts.

Kepler Video

Spearheaded video SDK patterns showcased to 80K+ viewers.

Domain PMs

Partnered across audio, comms hub, FTUE, widgets, and theming.

Key project

Video application for Vega OS.

A reference app that made touch, voice, and D-pad behavior visible enough for teams to implement consistently.

Vega OS adoption

A video-first in-vehicle reference experience for OEM teams.

Multi-modality

Seamless switching between voice, touch, and D-pad navigation.

SDK re-use

Reusable interaction patterns later adopted by adjacent video teams.

Interaction design

Three inputs, one experience.

Drivers should not have to think about the input mode they are using. Shilpy authored focus-management rules that unified voice, touch, and D-pad without dead ends.

✓Unified focus behavior across input methods

✓Reduced confusion across navigation paths

✓Improved accessibility across all modalities

✓Tokenized theming audits for OEM partners

Design artifacts