Work/Amazon Account Dashboard

Enterprise UXHeuristic AuditDecision Support

Amazon Account Dashboard

How critical account risk signals get buried in noise — and a principled system for surfacing what matters most.

Role

UX Designer

Heuristic Audit
Problem Framing
Design Solutions

Team

Solo

Solo consultant embedded with the Amazon team

Tools

FigmaDesign & prototyping

Seller CentralAudit & analysis

Timeline

8 weeks

W1W3W5W8

AuditFramingDesignSpec

Designed for

desktop

TL;DR — The Outcome

What shipped

Deactivation warning buried among promotional widgets
2,445 violations sat in an unsorted list
Audited the interface, framed four core problems
Designed a priority-first system: 0–1000 health score, priority alerts, violation management, and guided resolution flows

My role

Solo UX designer owning the full arc
Heuristic audit, problem framing, design principles
Specification of four interconnected solutions
Embedded as a consultant with the Amazon team

Timeline

Wk 1–2: Research & Audit
Wk 3–4: Problem Framing & Principles
Wk 5–7: Design Solutions
Wk 8: Specification & Handoff

60%Faster critical issue identificationTime from dashboard load to first action

35%Higher violation resolution rateWithin 7 days of notification

40%Fewer support contactsSellers finding answers in-dashboard

28%Higher seller satisfactionSatisfaction improvement (projected)

01 — Context

The Stakes Are Asymmetrically High

Millions of third-party sellers rely on Amazon Seller Central's Account Health Dashboard to monitor compliance, shipping, and service quality. Account deactivation can destroy a livelihood overnight — yet the interface communicating that risk was designed without urgency.

Sellers need a system that surfaces what matters most. Instead, they were given a report.

2,445Active Policy Violations

0.73%Order Defect Rate (Target: <1%)

535Buyer Messages >24hr Overdue

48,963Stranded Inventory Units

The critical alert — "Your account is at risk of deactivation" — appeared as one of nine equal-weight cards alongside an Amazon Business ad. A seller could scroll past it entirely.

02 — Research & Audit

What We Found

Heuristic evaluation, task analysis, cognitive load assessment, and seller forum review — applied against a live Figma capture of Seller Central.

1Visibility

Alerts Buried in Noise

Deactivation warning shares equal weight with a promotional ad. Zero hierarchy.

2Architecture

Fragmented Metrics

5 separate tabs to understand full account health. No unified view.

3Workload

Overwhelming Violations

2,445 violations in a flat list. No filtering, bulk actions, or guided resolution.

4Affordance

Weak Action Guidance

Generic "View" and "Manage" buttons with no context on what to do next.

5Consistency

Mismatched Time Windows

ODR uses 60 days, Late Shipment 30 days, Cancel Rate 7 days — unexplained.

6Feedback

No Progress Indication

No appeal status, no resolution tracking, no distinction between active and resolved.

Amazon Seller Central Account Health Dashboard — the existing interface

The existing Seller Central Account Health Dashboard — primary audit artefact

03 — Problem Framing

Four Problems Driving the Work

Before jumping to solutions — four interconnected problem statements, each representing a real seller pain point.

Account Health dashboard

⚠ Addressing your policy violations in a timely manner will prevent unnecessary disruption to your selling account.

⚠ Account at risk of deactivation

2 policy violations require action

Amazon Business: Grow your sales

Account Health News

An error has occurred loading News.

Manage your compliance

Product Compliance Requests: 255

The deactivation alert competes with ads and news

Problem 01

The Invisible Emergency

Deactivation risk has the same visual weight as promotional content. Sellers spend 2–3 minutes on the dashboard and can miss critical alerts entirely.

HMW: Make deactivation risk impossible to ignore without crying wolf for minor issues.

Policy Compliance — violation list

Suspected IP Violations

⚠72

Received IP Complaints

⚠66

Authenticity Complaints

⚠119

Food & Safety Issues

⚠132

Restricted Product Violations

⚠505

Other Policy Violations

⚠1,486

View all (2445)

Every row looks equally urgent — no priority signal

Problem 02

Death by a Thousand Violations

2,445 violations in chronological order with no urgency weighting, bulk actions, or resolution guidance. Sellers can’t see which violations threaten their account most.

HMW: Transform a paralyzing list into a prioritized workflow that shows exactly what to do next.

Three separate cards, three silos

Customer Service Performance

Order Defect Rate0.73%

Target: under 1%60 days

Policy Compliance

At Risk

Violations2,445

Target: 0 issues

Shipping Performance

Late Shipment Rate

30 days1.34%

Cancel Rate

7 days0%

Valid Tracking

30 days99.98%

60 days, 30 days, 7 days — no unified view

Problem 03

The Disconnected Metrics Puzzle

Metrics live on separate pages with different time windows. Impossible to understand the full picture at a glance — sellers must navigate 5 tabs to connect the dots.

HMW: Provide a single, truthful view of account health that shows how metrics relate.

Actual CTAs from dashboard

Order Defect Rate0.73% — 73% of threshold

View details

A-to-z Guarantee claims0.6% — drives most of ODR

View details

Shipping PerformanceLate Shipment Rate 1.34%

View details

Need help?Speak to an Account Health Specialist.📞 Contact Us

Every link says “View details” — none says what to do

Problem 04

What Do I Do Next?

Generic action buttons, no step-by-step guidance, no success criteria. When sellers find a problem, they face a second challenge: understanding how to resolve it.

HMW: Guide sellers through resolution with clear steps, realistic expectations, and visible progress.

04 — Design Principles

Five Principles for High-Stakes Dashboards

Derived from the research phase and validated against dashboard patterns in financial trading, healthcare monitoring, and industrial control.

CRITICAL

ACTIVE

Urgency first.

The most urgent item dominates the viewport. A dashboard is a decision support tool, not a report.

0.73%Order Defect Rate

→

Review Claims

Action over metrics.

Every metric paired with a recommended action — or confirmation that none is needed. Metrics without context create anxiety.

412 / 1000

CS 40%

Policy 35%

Ship 25%

Progressive disclosure.

Health score first, then categories, then individual violations. Don’t show 2,445 rows when the seller needs “2 critical, here’s where to start.”

↑

Status, not state.

Show how things are changing. Trend indicators and velocity (improving/worsening) matter as much as current values.

Before

At Risk

After

412

Earned clarity over opacity.

Explicit thresholds, clear consequences, honest communication. Trust-building, not anxiety-inducing.

05 — Before vs. After

The Core Design Decisions

Before

Alert buried among 9 equal-weight cards

Deactivation warning has the same visual weight as a promotional ad.

⚠

Alert indistinguishable from other cards

After

Full-width sticky alert dominates the viewport

Critical state is impossible to miss — always visible at the top.

⚠ Critical — Account at Risk

2 policy violations require immediate action

Resolve →

Full-width, color-coded by severity

Before

No unified health score — seller must infer it

Metrics scattered across tabs with no composite view.

0.73%ODR

1.34%LSR

?Overall

No way to see overall standing at a glance

After

Overall Health Score (0–1000) with breakdown

Single number communicates magnitude and direction.

412/ 1000

Score, trend, and zone — one glance

Before

2,445 violations in a flat chronological list

No filtering, no grouping, no urgency weighting.

… 2,440 more rows

After

Grouped by type, sorted by urgency, bulk-actionable

Sellers see where to start and can act on multiple at once.

IP ViolationsCritical72

Restricted ProductsHigh505

OtherLow1,486

Before

Metrics fragmented across 5 separate tabs

Inconsistent time windows. No explanation of why they differ.

CSP

Policy

Ship

Eligib

VoC

60d30d7d——

Each tab is a silo with its own time window

After

Single-page unified view with collapsible sections

Explicit time labels on every metric. Full picture in one scroll.

▾Customer Service

60 days

▸Policy Compliance

30 days

▸Shipping

30 days

Before

Generic CTAs with no status tracking

“View” and “Manage” buttons. No appeal status. No progress.

View Details

Manage

What do I do next?

After

Specific CTAs with appeal status tracking

Every violation has a clear next step and visible progress.

Submit appeal for 3 IP violationsAction needed

Appeal: Restricted product listingIn review · ~3d

Food safety documentationResolved

06 — Design Solutions

Four Systems That Work Together

Solution 01

Priority-Based Dashboard Architecture

Viewport restructured into three priority zones: Critical (sticky alert + health score, always visible), Active (metrics needing attention, collapsible), and Informational (trends, news, tools).

Trigger

Any metric approaching 80% of its policy threshold, or any critical event

Alert Type

Full-width sticky banner with severity level: Critical (red), Warning (amber), Notice (blue)

CTA Design

One primary action button with specific label: "Review 2 Policy Violations" not "View Details"

Dismissal

Alerts cannot be permanently dismissed while the underlying issue persists

sellercentral.amazon.com / account-health

⚠ Critical — Account At Risk

Your account is at risk of deactivation · 2 policy violations require immediate action

Resolve Now →

412/ 1000

▼ −43 this weekTarget: 600+ (Good Standing)

Fair

Critical

At Risk

Fair

Good

Healthy

0.73%Order Defect Rate⚠ 73% of 1% limit · 60d

2,445Policy Violations⚠ 2 critical · action needed

1.34%Late Shipment Rate✓ Below 4% limit · 30d

Policy Violations by Category2,445 total

Other Violations

1,486

Restricted Products

505

Food & Safety Issues

132

IP Violations (Critical)

72 ⚠

Visualization recreated for portfolio purposes — original assets are under NDA.

Solution 02

Intelligent Violation Management System

2,445 violations transformed from flat list into prioritized workflow — auto-sorted by impact, grouped by type for batch resolution, each with a specific next step.

Default Sort

Impact level (Critical → High → Medium → Low), then date within each level

Grouping

By violation type with collapsible sections; each group shows count + resolution path

Bulk Actions

Select multiple violations of same type → batch appeal submission workflow

Status States

Requires Action / In Review / Appeal Submitted / Resolved — visible on every row

Resolution Guide

Inline expandable guide per violation type with exact steps, required documents, typical timelines

Policy Violations — Prioritized View

2 Critical18 High2,425 Other

Select All IP Violations (72) →Batch Appeal

IP ViolationIP-2847

Requires ActionCritical

IP ViolationIP-2831

Appeal SubmittedCritical

Restricted ProductRP-4102

In Review

Showing 3 of 2,445 — sorted by impact level

Key insight: IP Violations (72 cases) are the most urgent category, not because of count but because they are the most common trigger for account suspension. The redesign surfaces the type-to-consequence relationship, not just the volume.

Solution 03

Overall Health Score with Category Breakdown

A synthesized 0–1000 score computed from three metric categories, weighted by Amazon's actual enforcement patterns. At-a-glance status sellers can track over time.

Score Model

Customer Service (40%) + Policy Compliance (35%) + Shipping (25%)

Thresholds

800–1000: Excellent · 600–799: Good · 400–599: At Risk · 0–399: Critical

Trend Display

7-day and 30-day delta shown alongside score with directional indicator

Drill-Down

Each category card is clickable and expands to show constituent metrics

Score Composition Model412 / 1000

Customer Service · 40%

Policy · 35%

25%

Customer Service

312 / 400Good

Policy Compliance

68 / 350Critical

Shipping Performance

32 / 250At Risk

Solution 04

Action-Oriented Resolution Flows

Every failing or at-risk metric gets an inline resolution panel — exact steps, required documents, and projected score impact. No navigation away from the dashboard.

ODR Resolution

Direct link to A-to-z Claims manager with filter pre-applied; shows which 4,252 orders have defects with resolution priority

Messages

Queue of 535 overdue messages shown in priority order (oldest first); response templates provided

Policy Actions

Group-select IP violations → guided appeal wizard with document upload, policy citation, and submission tracking

Success State

Each resolved action shows projected impact on Account Health Score before seller commits

IP Violation — ASIN B07X3K...Filed: Mar 2, 2024

Critical

✓

Identify

✓

Documents

Appeal

Review

Resolved

Step 3: Submit Appeal

Upload authorization letter and invoice. Amazon typically responds within 48 hours.

Submit Appeal →Projected: +18 pts to score

07 — Design Decisions

Notable Trade-offs and Choices

Why a Score, Not Just Colors?

Red/yellow/green doesn’t communicate magnitude. A score shows direction and distance — going from 620 to 580 means crossing a threshold, and needing 20 points back creates a concrete goal.

Color only

Which is worse? By how much?

Score-based

580/ 1000

20 pts to reach "Good"

Why Not Just Fix the Card Layout?

Cards create false equivalence between items of radically different urgency. We eliminated them in the critical zone entirely — priority-driven layout instead.

Card layout

⚠ Alert

News

Equal visual weight

Priority layout

⚠ Account at Risk

Active metrics

Info & trends

Why Keep Tab Navigation?

Sellers have muscle memory for Customer Service / Policy / Shipping tabs. The redesign adds a unified summary above while preserving deep-dive tabs below.

Unified Health Summary — 412 / 1000

Customer Service

Policy

Shipping

Alert Persistence Rules

Sellers can minimize the critical banner (collapse to a slim bar), but cannot dismiss it while the account is at risk. Warnings persist until resolved.

⚠ Critical — Account at Risk—

↓seller minimizes

⚠ At Risk — tap to expand

Accessibility note: All severity states use both color and iconography and text labels. Color is never the sole indicator of status. Threshold bars and inline trend charts include ARIA labels for screen readers. Touch targets are minimum 44px for all interactive elements.

08 — Expected Impact

Hypothesized Outcomes

Projected improvements based on comparable dashboard redesigns in financial compliance, logistics, and seller portal domains:

↓60%

Time to identify critical issues (from first dashboard load)

↑35%

Violation resolution rate within 7 days of notification

↓40%

Account Health support contact rate (sellers finding answers in-dashboard)

↑28%

Seller satisfaction with Account Health tooling

Key Metrics to Test in A/B

Time-to-action on critical alerts: measure from dashboard load to first click on the alert CTA

< 5s target

Violation resolution velocity: % of new violations resolved within 7, 14, 30 days

7 / 14 / 30d

Appeal submission rate: how many sellers with violations actually submit appeals under each design

% submitted

Re-activation rate: for sellers who receive deactivation notices, what % successfully appeal (downstream metric)

% reactivated

Dashboard return rate: are sellers checking account health more regularly? (signals increased engagement with the system as a useful tool rather than a source of anxiety)

visits / week

09 — Reflection

What This Project Taught Me

Dashboard ≠ Report

Every design choice should answer: "Does this help the user decide what to do next?" — not "Does this show the user their data?"

Urgency is a Design Material

Visual hierarchy, animation, information architecture — all serve urgency. In high-stakes tools, designing urgency well is the primary problem.

The Complexity Trap

2,445 violations with no structure isn’t "comprehensive" — it’s abdication of design responsibility. Good design makes complex systems feel simple.

Earned Trust Through Honesty

Vague language ("At Risk" without quantification) creates anxiety. Explicit thresholds and progress visibility are a trust-building strategy.

What I Would Do Differently

Primary research with actual sellers — especially those who’ve experienced suspension. The best insights come from the most extreme user situations.

Next case study

Amazon Account Dashboard

TL;DR — The Outcome

01 — Context

The Stakes Are Asymmetrically High

02 — Research & Audit

What We Found

Alerts Buried in Noise

Fragmented Metrics

Overwhelming Violations

Weak Action Guidance

Mismatched Time Windows

No Progress Indication

03 — Problem Framing

Four Problems Driving the Work

The Invisible Emergency

Death by a Thousand Violations

The Disconnected Metrics Puzzle

What Do I Do Next?

04 — Design Principles

Five Principles for High-Stakes Dashboards

Urgency first.

Action over metrics.

Progressive disclosure.

Status, not state.

Earned clarity over opacity.

05 — Before vs. After

The Core Design Decisions

06 — Design Solutions

Four Systems That Work Together

Priority-Based Dashboard Architecture

Intelligent Violation Management System

Overall Health Score with Category Breakdown

Action-Oriented Resolution Flows

07 — Design Decisions

Notable Trade-offs and Choices

Why a Score, Not Just Colors?

Why Not Just Fix the Card Layout?

Why Keep Tab Navigation?

Alert Persistence Rules

08 — Expected Impact

Hypothesized Outcomes

Key Metrics to Test in A/B

09 — Reflection

What This Project Taught Me

Dashboard ≠ Report

Urgency is a Design Material

The Complexity Trap

Earned Trust Through Honesty

What I Would Do Differently

TEFConnect

01 — Context

The Stakes Are Asymmetrically High

02 — Research & Audit

What We Found

Alerts Buried in Noise

Fragmented Metrics

Overwhelming Violations

Weak Action Guidance

Mismatched Time Windows

No Progress Indication

03 — Problem Framing

Four Problems Driving the Work

The Invisible Emergency

Death by a Thousand Violations

The Disconnected Metrics Puzzle

What Do I Do Next?

04 — Design Principles

Five Principles for High-Stakes Dashboards

Urgency first.

Action over metrics.

Progressive disclosure.

Status, not state.

Earned clarity over opacity.

05 — Before vs. After

The Core Design Decisions

06 — Design Solutions

Four Systems That Work Together

Priority-Based Dashboard Architecture

Intelligent Violation Management System

Overall Health Score with Category Breakdown