- Doc
- JA-2026
- Author
- Joseph Alfonso, Lead Product Designer
- Location
- Seattle
- Rev.
I design complex products and make them feel simple to the people who use them.
15 years leading product design at Amazon and Discovery Education, from a document platform with 4.8 billion records in 67 countries to real-time collaboration tools for K–12 classrooms. I also mentor early-career designers at Designlab and the School of Visual Concepts.
01 Selected work
EDM-01 Amazon · 2020–present
Employee Document Management & AI
$10M+ saved per year
Early in research I found employees using screen readers who had memorized where menu items sat, because the product couldn’t be read aloud. I led the redesign of the platform behind 4.8 billion documents in 67 countries, then designed how AI shows up across four of its product surfaces.
Read the case study →Nobody had flagged the accessibility problem. Users had quietly memorized where the menus were. Standard testing can’t see people who have given up.
RES-02 Amazon · A to Z app
Self-Service Resignation
Redesigning how employees quit
Resigning used to mean a form and a confirmation screen. I ran the leadership workshops, built the business case, and pushed for a flow that shows people their other options and treats the ones who still leave with respect.
Read the case study →The turning point wasn’t in the brief: people leaving for “growth” wanted training from other teams.
STU-03 Discovery Education
Discovery Education Studio
Real-time collaboration for K–12 classrooms
Teachers and students were emailing, downloading and re-uploading files just to work together. I led the design of Studio: shared boards where a class can create together and see each other’s cursors move live, on whatever device they have.
Read the case study →Our first prototypes gave everyone every control at once. Power users loved it; everyone else froze. Guardrails fixed it.
