This article describes how AWS and PwC applied the Amazon Working Backwards mechanism combined with UX design principles to improve the onboarding experience for Virtual Engineering Workbench (VEW), a cloud-based automotive development environment.

• VEW provides preconfigured development environments for automotive software developers, integrators, and testers
• Beta user feedback revealed painful onboarding experience with no structured procedure
• Poor UX impacts adoption: 88% of users won't return after bad experience
• Design Thinking framework applied with three phases: Engage, Define, and Build
• Service Blueprints mapped front- and back-end processes and customer touchpoints
• Created two personas: Motivated and Skeptic users to address diverse behaviors
• Journey maps visualized current and ideal user experiences for each persona
• Next phases include defining ideal experience and conducting usability testing

By combining Working Backwards with UX design, AWS improved VEW's onboarding to accelerate user adoption and reduce development effort for scaling to 5,000+ users.