Senior Experience, Product & Design Leader

I love UX most when it leaves the screen and becomes part of real life.

Charlene Yong

I love UX that becomes part of everyday life: a store visit, a product choice, or a service that feels effortless. That curiosity also drives my work with AI, finding practical ways to reduce repetitive work and give people more room to think.

Reports toVP of Caldecott Music Group and GM of Vista Musical Instruments.
Cross-functionalPartnering with marketing, retail, VIP service, product, and strategy.
EcosystemSeven brands connected through a shared ecommerce experience.
Continuous improvementWeekly feature reviews, kiosk insights, and feedback from store teams.

Vista Musical Instruments

Retail UX across seven brands.

Design leadership across Swee Lee and the VMI portfolio, connecting ecommerce, store experiences, and shared design systems. The work brings customer needs, business priorities, and engineering capacity into decisions about what to build, reuse, or explore further.

RoleUX/UI Design Lead
Team3 direct reports across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand
Mentorship & collaboration7+ teammates across marketing, design, retail ops
FocusDesign strategy, shared systems, ecommerce, and retail experience

Problem Architecture

A / Brief Chaos

Clarity before commitment.

Built a Slack brief template and AI check that identifies missing information before requests enter the sprint.

B / Build Discipline

Build for reuse.

Prioritised shared Shopify components, with brand variables and styles that support reuse across the portfolio.

C / Store Reality

Learn from the store floor.

Combined kiosk reporting, store visits, staff feedback, and shopper conversations to understand the experience beyond analytics.

D / Personalisation

Make existing data useful.

Worked with developers to explore recommendations using purchase history, without adding paid plugins or APIs.

E / Conflict Bridge

Find common ground.

Listen to each team's concerns, make the trade-offs visible, and bring people together around a shared decision.

F / Reporting Loop

Keep learning after launch.

Compare feature performance week to week and prioritise next steps with product, content, and engineering.

My Leadership Framework

How decisions move forward.

01 / Clarify the need

Start with a shared brief.

Structured briefs and AI-assisted checks establish the business need, ownership, timing, and missing information before the team commits.

  • What problem are we solving?
  • What do we need to know before design begins?

02 / Consider the system

Reuse with purpose.

Assess new components against existing patterns, cross-brand needs, and ongoing maintenance. Invest where a new solution adds value beyond a single request.

  • Can an existing pattern meet the need?
  • What changes when this reaches every brand?

03 / Build alignment

Understand the disagreement.

Make space for individual concerns, clarify the trade-offs, and use visual examples to support a shared decision.

  • What matters most to each team?
  • What can we agree on to move forward?

About

Designer. Lead. Product Partner.

Singapore has shaped my interest in the details that make everyday services work. I'm drawn to tangible products and experiences where thoughtful design connects people, places, and technology.

I turn loose creative demand into product decisions, systems, and shipped experiences.

Find out more

How I work

Ask better questions Protect team focus Bridge teams Make constraints visible Use data carefully Visit the floor Prototype quickly Design for reuse Mentor patiently Push back kindly