The Situation
As Alexa+ expanded to support both internal and external developers, onboarding into the SDK and agent ecosystem remained complex and highly supported. Builders of varying technical levels were required to jump between documentation, consoles, code, and support channels just to reach a usable starting point. This created ambiguity around required assets, effort, and expectations, and limited scalability by relying heavily on solutions architects and internal engineering support.
The Strategy
Rather than designing a traditional setup wizard, I framed onboarding as an agent-led experience—one that could evaluate the assets a developer provided and actively guide what to do next. The agent reasoned over inputs like APIs, SDKs, or partial agent definitions, identified what was missing, and helped scaffold the remaining steps. This reduced ambiguity while preserving flexibility for different developer entry points.
I focused the design on a single, continuous onboarding flow that minimized context switching and helped developers understand both what to do and why. While technical work still occurred across tools, the agent served as the connective layer, maintaining context and managing expectations about effort and complexity throughout the process.
At a product level, I intentionally worked at a high-level conceptual depth to demonstrate the breadth of the developer experience and establish a reusable onboarding framework. This allowed the work to function both as a near-term MLP exploration and a North Star for scalable, self-service onboarding—aligned with company priorities around cost efficiency and developer autonomy.
The Result
- Created a working prototype that demonstrated the feasibility and value of agent-led onboarding
- Established a shared onboarding framework for future self-service developer tools
- Kicked off cross-team collaboration across design, engineering, and program partners
- Helped scope design investment and clarify where deep UX work was most needed
- Bridged the gap between highly supported 1P workflows and self-supported onboarding for external developers
Amara Hulslander – UX Designer 