Common Experience Requirements (CER)

Context

Amazon is not a top-down, mandate-driven organization. Product teams within AFT independently choose their front-end frameworks and design systems based on local needs, constraints, and delivery goals. Over time, this autonomy resulted in hundreds of tools evolving in parallel, often solving similar problems with different patterns, styles, and interaction models.

There was no directive requiring teams to adopt Alchemy (AFT-XD owned design system) or any single system. While this enabled speed locally, it created fragmentation at scale and made it difficult to establish a consistent, accessible, common experience across the fulfillment network.

The Common Experience Requirements (CER) were created to address this gap without introducing centralized enforcement.

Intent

CERs were not designed to replace existing design systems or override product-specific UX decisions. Instead, they define the minimum experience bar all AFT products must meet in order to participate in Common Experience.

The goal was to establish a shared foundation that product, design, and engineering teams could align to, while preserving local system ownership and flexibility.

Adherence to CERs provides a consistent baseline across AFT tools, clarifies accessibility expectations, and creates a path toward reuse and familiarity without forcing a single implementation approach.

Structure

Style and presentation

Style and presentation requirements define how interfaces appear at a foundational level, regardless of framework. This includes color, typography, spacing, iconography, states, localization, writing, and component-level visual values.

These requirements use Alchemy as the baseline. Because the guidance is already baked into Alchemy components, teams using Alchemy have a direct, low-friction path to compliance. Teams using other systems can continue doing so, but must make equivalent updates to meet the same requirements.

This approach was intentional: rather than mandating Alchemy, it positioned Alchemy as the easiest path to Common Experience compliance.

Interaction and usage

Interaction and usage requirements define how users interact with interfaces, with a strong accessibility lens. These requirements were largely sourced from Amazon’s accessibility standards and then adapted to meet the realities of fulfillment environments, Operator and Associate workflows, and physical constraints.

This guidance is reinforced through AFT Accessibility Bar Raiser discussions and working sessions, ensuring alignment across teams and products.

Key decisions

• Enablement over enforcement: CERs guide teams toward compliance rather than mandate system adoption.
• Incentive-based adoption: Alchemy alignment reduces compliance friction without excluding other systems.
• Accessibility as common ground: Interaction and usage requirements anchor on shared accessibility standards.
• Layered requirements: Separating presentation from interaction clarifies where consistency matters most.

Outcomes

• Defined a clear, documented set of Common Experience Requirements for AFT products
• Established a framework-agnostic compliance model that scales across teams
• Reduced ambiguity around accessibility and interaction expectations
• Created an adoption strategy aligned with Amazon’s decentralized operating model

Reflection

This work reinforced my belief that Common Experience is less about enforcing uniformity and more about creating shared foundations. By focusing on incentives, accessibility, and layered requirements, CERs helped teams move faster without sacrificing cohesion or autonomy.