Evolving Rio: Finalizing the Productization of Amazon’s Shopping Design System

After leading design execution and systems at scale across Amazon Devices, I joined the Shopping Design team to help guide a critical transformation: turning the Rio Design System, which powers Amazon’s global shopping experience, into a fully-realized product.

The Rio team had already laid a strong foundation. They had a brand identity, support mechanisms like office hours and Chime channels, and a solid internal reputation. But what they needed was a strategy to operationalize Rio as a product at scale, and someone with experience building and evolving large, complex systems.

That’s where I came in.

Productizing a System at Scale

In my first weeks, I focused on aligning the vision for Rio with product strategy fundamentals. Rather than a support service focused on components and tickets, I advocated for a shift toward:

• A roadmap-driven system with measurable goals

• Clearly defined KPIs around adoption, satisfaction, and system usage

• Formal governance mechanisms through the Shopping Design System Council

• A data-informed process for validating Rio’s role in business outcomes

This was about helping the team transition from “maintaining a library” to owning a platform.

Connecting the Ecosystem

One of the challenges I helped address was fragmentation across internal systems. Multiple design systems, some mature, some siloed, were solving similar problems in parallel.

I championed a networked model that treated Rio as the central foundation, while allowing for domain-specific subsystems like Search to retain local autonomy. This approach:

• Encouraged collaboration instead of competition between systems

• Established shared design tokens, documentation standards, and alignment mechanisms

• Created a more unified experience for teams building across retail surfaces

Scaling a Flagship Component: “Buy Now”

During my time with the team, we also focused on bringing a high-impact component to market: the “Buy Now” button, one of the most visible and important touchpoints in the Amazon shopping flow.

This wasn’t just a redesign. It was a test case for Rio as a product. We treated it like a full development cycle:

• Ran multiple rounds of experimentation

• Validated performance and usability across platforms

• Used the success of this launch to demonstrate Rio’s value to internal stakeholders

It was one of Rio’s flagship wins, a tangible example of what a centralized design system could accomplish when backed by clear leadership and experimentation.

Impact: Small Window, Big Leaps

Even in a short span, the Rio team achieved measurable results that reflected the maturity and growing credibility of the system:

• NPS increased from -26 to +7

• Perception of Rio as an “innovative design system” rose from 20% to 61%

• Rio’s design improvements contributed to a nine-figure increase in global GCCP

My role was to help focus the system’s momentum, embed a strong product mindset, and reinforce the structure needed for long-term success.

Reflection: Embedding Systems Thinking into Scale

Although my time with Rio was brief, the opportunity was deeply meaningful. It was a chance to apply everything I’d learned building systems like the Fire Phone and the Bridge Team in the DDG org, this time at the largest scale I’d ever worked in.

What stood out most wasn’t the tooling or the documentation. It was the shift in mindset: from service to product, from isolated efforts to interconnected systems, and from invisible infrastructure to measurable impact.

Even in a few months, we were able to drive momentum, align teams, and lay the groundwork for Rio to evolve into a true platform for Amazon Shopping, one built not just to scale design, but to amplify innovation and consistency across the globe.