Amazon Project Kuiper

“Mission to provide fast, affordable connectivity to unserved and underserved communities worldwide.”

As Project Kuiper's founding industrial designer, I established the complete design identity for customer-facing products (Customer Terminals)—from architecture and form to materials, finishes, and brand expression.

By demonstrating the value of design, I earned trust across Amazon leadership, delivered launch-ready products for 20+ countries through multiple validation cycles, grew the team to five designers, received a fund to build a dedicated Industrial Design studio space, and positioned industrial design to influence both Amazon and future Kuiper generations.

1. Design Advocacy

Transformed the organizational understanding of Industrial Design’s impact by:

• Positioning Industrial Design as a pivotal business development asset

• Building trusted relationships with executive leadership, including regular design reviews with VPs and SVPs

• Presenting directly to the CEO, Board of Directors, and senior leadership

• Elevating design process standards and aesthetics, influencing Amazon's broader Industrial Design approach

2. Design Establishment

• Crafted and championed Kuiper's distinctive design identity, shaping the brand's future expression across marketing, PR, UX, and packaging

• Developed the holistic design language by collaborating with engineering on product architecture while owning form development and material specifications

• Established the strategic product portfolio roadmap and secured resources for team headcount, studio renovation, and enhanced prototyping capabilities.

3. Design Execution

Industrial Design

Designed and developed the following products from concept sketches, prototypes, renderings, DFM, to mass production-ready CAD surface models:

• Phased array antennas (3 variations)

• Wifi Routers with power bricks

• Cables (15 regions AC cables, ethernet cable, couplers)

• Mounts (6 variations including ground stand, roof mount, pole adapter)

Visual Design

• Designed packaging art design for production including ink, printing, and cost

• Established Quick Start Guide style guideline with copywriters, print production, legal, and accessibility teams

Color, Material, and Finishes

• Defined Project Kuiper’s customer-facing products color, material, and finishes

  • Aluminum extrusion, diecast, injection molded plastics (i.e., PP, TPE, PVC), hydrophobic film, sheet metal, LEDs, labels

• Developed custom paints with suppliers that meet reliability (i.e., environmental, heat-soak, UV, hail, corrosion) , product integrity, cost target, and aesthetic

• Defined limit samples standards with golden samples (i.e., upper/mid/lower samples, deltaE range, L,a,b value range)

• Established cosmetic inspection documents, step & gap documents, CMF documents

Build Cycle & Production

• Designed products to optimize BOM+MVA: understand and negotiate with engineers and suppliers on tooling cost (steel safe), manufacturing process time, package transportation volume/cost impact

• Travel to suppliers to inspect and troubleshoot build parts (plastics, aluminum, cables, etc) and assembly operations

• Executed designs throughout the build cycles from prototypes, proof of concepts, HVT, DVT, PVT, and General Launch

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Design: UX, User Testing, Brand, Packaging

• Engineerings: Phased antennas, Asics, Silicon, Hardware, Mechanical, Thermal, Reliability, Product Integrity

• Supply chain: Suppliers, GCM, GQM, OEM, Sustainability

• Business: Business Operations, Product Managers, Marketing, PR, Finance

• Legal: Compliance & regulatory, Legal Counsel, Copywriters

• Quality: Beta Testing, Focused User Testing, General Launch Testing