From Chaos to Clarity
A guided journey from raw signals → real-time insights
How do you translate a technical product document into a viable, customer-centric design vision and build initial user trust when launching a specialized service like AWS IoT FleetWise with no existing customer base or usage data?
18 months
Timeline
AWS IoT
Platform
0 → 1
Product launch
Service overview
Modern vehicles generate a staggering amount of information, including brake pressure, sensor readings, battery temperature, GPS signals, and more. But the real challenge is not the volume of data alone. It is that:
Every vehicle reports information differently
Most of it arrives too late to be useful
Most teams (specially non technical) can't even begin to make sense of it
When AWS set out to build FleetWise, the goal wasn't just to "collect data."
The goal was to translate complexity into practical use.
This case study tells the story of how we did that, step by step.
My role in the story
As the Lead UX Designer, my job was to:
Bring clarity
to ambiguous technical problems
Simplify
complex systems into trust
Advocate
for user and business needs
Align teams
to ambiguous around a shared vision problems
Design flows
that turn raw data to actionable insights
I guided the product end-to-end: from understanding messy raw signal files to shaping how real-time insights appear on dashboards.
My Biggest Impact
Creating the first clear, end-to-end vision of the system. That visual became the team’s north star, guiding engineering choices, shaping product strategy, and keeping everyone aligned as the product evolved.
The automotive IoT landscape was marked by deep, systemic complexity that made meaningful innovation difficult. Before designing any interfaces, I needed to understand why working with vehicle data felt so fragmented and overwhelming. By stepping back from features and screens, I examined the broader ecosystem, how data was produced, moved, interpreted, and acted on across vehicles, teams, and cloud systems. That exploration surfaced three recurring industry challenges that ultimately shaped both the product strategy and the UX direction.
Industry problems
Raw data chaos
Unstructured automotive signals
Data Fragmentation
Vehicles don't speak the same language
Two vehicles might be reporting the exact same thing - say, brake pressure - but label it differently, measure it differently, or bury it in a proprietary file format.
Data Tsunami
25GB+ data per hour per vehicle
Vehicles send way more data than anyone needs. Imagine trying to sip water from a firehose. Some fleets send millions of data points per minute, most of which will never be used.
Latency Barriers
Insights often arrive too late to matter.
If something goes wrong on the road (say a brake issue) manufacturers might not find out until hours or days later resulting in recalls.
The Cost of Inaction
These systemic problems weren't just inconvenient—they were actively preventing automotive companies from building the next generation of connected vehicle experiences. Without solving these foundational issues, innovations like predictive maintenance, autonomous driving improvements, and real-time fleet optimization would remain out of reach.
Business impact
From zero to flagship AWS IoT service.
Keynote Announcement by AWS CEO Andy Jassy
Continued showcases at CES 2022, 2023, and 2024
By the numbers
5,000+
Vehicles Onboarded
streaming telemetry to the cloud, generating terabytes of data for insights
3
Customer POCs
delivered within 10 months of GA, validating production readiness
Cross-Amazon impact
extending FleetWise into new data-driven solutions
Strategic collaborations
Alexa Automotive
voice-driven insights
AWS Applied AI Solutions
reference architectures
Last Mile
delivery optimization
Team and design leadership
Designers mentored
Tactical execution support
Usability research guidance
Collaboration in engineering culture
UX as Strategic Function
Tactical execution support
Usability research guidance
Collaboration in engineering culture
From Zero to Industry Standard
Transformed an engineering prototype into a flagship AWS service, establishing UX as a strategic driver for a 0→1 IoT platform serving thousands of vehicles and powering next-generation automotive experiences.
Key learnings
Strategic insights from building a flagship service
“Design is not a finishing layer. It is a strategic tool that shapes product direction long before pixels or APIs exist.”
Embedding design early helped align teams, reduce rework, and clarify the product's north star from day one.
“In an engineering-driven culture, trust is earned by showing that design accelerates delivery, not slows it down.”
Translating UX decisions into technical and business outcomes built credibility and momentum across teams.
“Navigating ambiguity meant staying adaptable through change while protecting continuity in vision and experience.”
From shifting priorities to team turnover, design provided stability without sacrificing speed.
“Design became the connective tissue, aligning teams not only within the service, but across the broader AWS IoT organization.”
Shared frameworks, journeys, and artifacts turned diverse perspectives into aligned execution.
Extending my role beyond a UX designer
Fleetwise team at CES 2023 and 2024
Watch data collected by fleetwise being used in real time simulation