Blythe takes digital user experience to the next level as he reshapes the future of online interaction

Rochester, New York – In an era where streaming platforms compete fiercely for attention and loyalty, Amazon Prime Video has taken a decisive step to strengthen its digital presence by bringing in one of the tech industry’s most seasoned design minds. Jason Blythe ’02, ’05 MFA, long recognized for his forward-thinking approach to visual communication and interaction design, has now stepped into a major leadership role that places him at the center of one of the world’s largest entertainment ecosystems.

Blythe, who joined Amazon Prime Video in early 2025, directs a newly formed User Experience division—an ambitious unit of about 30 professionals spanning design, engineering, and product development. Together, they are tasked with refining the way over 250 million subscribers search for content, receive recommendations, and navigate Prime’s massive library. The new team represents Amazon’s confidence that user-centric design will define the next chapter of the streaming landscape.

For Blythe, the mission is clear but complex: make digital discovery feel effortless. His work revolves around enhancing personalization tools, improving search functionality, and finding ways to connect users more naturally with the entertainment they want. It’s a tall order in a crowded streaming market, yet one perfectly suited to someone who has spent his entire career studying how people behave online.

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A key ingredient in Prime’s UX evolution is data—mountains of it, drawn from millions of daily user interactions. But Blythe is quick to point out that numbers alone don’t guide design; context does. User histories, search patterns, and browsing timelines reveal not only what people click on but why. “Zooming in” on anonymous interactions, he argues, gives his team the human dimension they need to design for real-world moments.

Much of this approach traces back to Blythe’s 13-year span at Google, where he shaped the interfaces countless users interact with every day. From Search Ads to Google Shopping to Image and Video Search, Blythe helped steer some of Google’s most widely used products—and ultimately rose to the role of UX Director for Google Search Labs. Along the way, he even played a key part in redesigning Google’s homepage and search results page, a task that impacts billions of queries daily.

During his time at Google, Blythe often led design sessions built around real, anonymous user journeys—brief but revealing sequences that shed light on user intentions. One particular example still resonates with him. A session involving a visitor searching for men’s dress shirts took a surprising turn. After clicking an article in Gentleman’s Quarterly about what to wear to a job interview, the same user returned minutes later with another query. “Ten minutes later, presumably after they had read the article, they did another query about how to tie a tie,” Blythe said. “You start to get a sense of what’s going on with the user in the moment.”

It’s a small window into someone’s day, but multiplied across thousands of sessions, the patterns begin to form a map of user needs. “Then you analyze 100 more sessions, and you come up with 100 different answers,” he said. “For me, that’s when the design process begins. I try to see the users in the human context. That gives me the best knowledge about what’s working well and what we need to fix to make the users’ journey better for them.”

At Amazon, this philosophy continues to guide him. Now, he measures success not just by engagement spikes or trending titles, but by subtle shifts in how people interact with Prime’s tools. Do viewers find that obscure documentary faster? Do sports fans get clearer navigation options during busy weekends? Does the recommendation engine actually feel personal? These are the indicators Blythe and his team scrutinize, alongside direct user feedback, to refine what they build next.

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Yet he also stresses the importance of looking beyond data alone. “A big part is stepping back from all of that and having some intuition and vision about where the product should be in the future,” he said. Experience, he believes, must stand alongside analytics to create digital tools that not only solve today’s problems but anticipate tomorrow’s expectations.

Despite his fast-paced career in Silicon Valley and now at Amazon, Blythe remains an active presence at his alma mater, Rochester Institute of Technology. He serves on the College of Art and Design’s National Council and frequently returns to campus as a guest speaker. Over the years, he has also played a major role in strengthening the connection between RIT’s design programs and major industry players. Because of his influence, Google recruiters began attending RIT’s Creative Industry Days, encouraging students to envision futures in global tech companies. And now, with his new role at Amazon, he hopes to build a similar pipeline.

“I wanted to support Creative Industry Days because they didn’t exist when I was a student,” Blythe said. “These kinds of experiences and feedback are really important to students.”

With Blythe now steering user experience for one of the world’s most influential streaming platforms, Prime Video appears poised to redefine how people explore digital entertainment. If his past work is any indication, subscribers may soon discover that the platform understands their viewing habits in ways that feel strikingly intuitive—and unmistakably human.