Working in UX Design

Episode 44: From Meta To Masters: Why Good Designers Stay Curious and Courageous with Sabina Fernandez

Sabina Fernandez is a UX Content Design Lead whose designs have unlocked millions-worth of spending with diverse-owned suppliers. How? Empathy. She puts herself in the shoes of others to make things better.
After launching user experience (UX) content design in Meta's APAC headquarters, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where she continued to design with words and information, making Enterprise software intuitive and user-friendly at Meta. Before that, she crafted content for Yahoo, Audi, and Conde Nast Traveller.
Hear us cover:- Bridging the talent gap in content and product design- Why does it pay to be curious and courageous at work?- How is AI changing the work in content and product design?- Language and localisation competencies in global projects

Episode 43: Blockchain and Web3 Usability Design with Winnie Chong

Winnie Chong has spent 17 years bridging creativity and commerce in design, advertising, and interactive media across the APAC region. She’s worked with some of the biggest names, from VMLY&R, a global digital ad agency, to SPH, where she played a key role in transforming Singapore’s largest media company from traditional publishing to the digital economy. Today, she leads User Experience at Bank of New York and is based in Singapore. Winnie’s passion is understanding what people truly want, whether it’s clients, customers or users, and making sure the experiences she designs are not only functional but also loved. She believes great design starts with listening—even when it means unlearning what you thought you knew. It’s about sparking curiosity, igniting imagination, and bringing a little wonder into people’s lives.
Hear us cover:
Barriers to adopting new technologies
Investor and evangelism mindset for designers
The potential of blockchain and its associated projects
Why curiosity has a high correlation to one's career trajectory?

Episode 42: Behind the Numbers: Future proofing your Career, Pay and Progression with Jonathan Yap

Jonathan Yap is a design leader and community advocate exploring the evolving identity of design in Southeast Asia. Through Design Pay Asia, he dives beyond surface-level salary data to uncover deeper insights about career growth, education pathways, and the changing value of design in the region. With 15 years of experience across WeWork and Visa, and currently leading design standards at a Singapore bank, Jonathan brings a unique perspective on how design roles are transforming alongside technological advancement. His work combines quantitative insights with nuanced understanding of cultural and educational shifts in the design industry. As someone deeply invested in nurturing future design talent, he regularly speaks about the intersection of design education, industry needs, and regional identity in Southeast Asia's growing tech ecosystem.
Hear us cover:
Preview of Design Pay 2025 Report
Salaries between men and women
Where are the UX hotspots in South-East Asia?
How design education is shifting and what that means for future talents
The perception vs reality of design value in our region
Continuous learning as a product and design talent

Episode 41: The Art of Design Transition Scaling Innovations with Legacy with Thum Yin Teng

With over a decade in design, Yin has done everything from print and branding to working with startups, leading event creatives, and managing an indie band’s branding. After 5 years in consulting, where she worked across different industries and regions, she now lead the design and product teams at Naluri, pulling all that experience together to create impactful digital products.
 
Hear us cover:
Building a regional product with global ambitions from Malaysia
Evolving Naluri's Brand and Design Language
Designing around legacy systems
Insights building and designing for HealthTech
Consulting at McKinsey vs working In-house

Episode 40: Beyond Digital, Incorporating Service and Product Management in WealthTech with Isaac Lee

Kicking off his career through hackathons, Isaac Lee quickly transitioned from payments into wealthtech. With a passion for solving problems at scale, he's revamped wealthtech apps, overhauled customer service workflows, and automated everything from onboarding to exclusive investor products. Now, he’s discovering just how far technology can elevate wealth management as a senior product manager at Endowus.
 
Hear us cover:
Solving the issue of both online and offline experience in wealth management
Cultural adaptation versus thought leadership, GTM for different markets
Product Innovation at a growth stage company
Building a career in FinTech

Episode 39: Innovation Design and Beyond with Sherylene

Shery is a design strategist with a flair for unconventional thinking and excels at tackling complex problems in creative ways. After nearly a decade in New Zealand, this Singaporean returnee has built a solid track record across Aviation, Education, Digital Consulting, FinTech, and more. As a cheeseboard layout expert, amateur wine-enthusiast and lazy food lover, she set up the Innovation Design Club as a support group for wayward designers like herself. Now part of the care Innovation team at SC Ventures, she leverages her talent for connecting the dots to drive ecosystem considerate thinking and achieve meaningful growth.
 
A strong believer in outcome-driven collaboration, Shery is passionate about reinforcing future-proof strategies through people-first approaches. With deep experience in service and product design, she’s led impactful initiatives in digital transformation, customer experience, and partnerships across diverse industries.
 
Hear us cover:
- Skillsets of an Innovation Designer (or Consultant)
- Building a community like Innovation Design Club
- Consulting vs In-house Design Team
- Innovation theatre in enterprises
- Sustainability practices

Episode 38: Service Design and Beyond with Adela Ordonez

Adela is Director of Product Design and User Insights teams at Zalora, working across various SEA markets. She has been at the forefront of designing user friendly and intentional products, services and experiences. She has been both on client side and consultancy side having worked across continents in Americas, Europe and now in Asia.
 
Hear us cover:- Service Design in Europe vs Asia- Skillsets of a Service Designer- Projects at Zalora and more that goes beyond UX design- Consulting vs In-house Design Team
 

Episode 37: Design Leadership — Paths for Progress with Norman Teh

Norman is a senior design manager based in Singapore. At Grab, he drives strategy, design, culture, and growth across the organization with a focus on elevating user experiences across support, comms, safety, and family experiences for 600+ million people across Southeast Asia.
He’s deeply fascinated by how businesses, communities, and ecosystems are built, broken, and evolved and why we make the choices we do. Outside of work, he shares his insights as a writer, moderator, and speaker. He’s been nominated as a young gun by Antalis 10-20-30, a judge for Singapore Good Design and has been featured in Business Times, Singapore Economic Development, The Straits Times, art4d, MTV Asia, The Breakfast Show, and Juice magazine.
 
Hear us cover:
- Managing and partnering up in a corporate environment
- Building a diverse in-house design team that thrives
- Engaging others on the possibilities and potential of design
- Building sustainable talent practices with new capabilities and approaches
- How do you push yourself to be better as a design leader?

Episode 36: Communicating Impact as a Design Leader with Izwan Ismail

Izwan Ismail is a digital and design leader with over a decade of experience that encompasses startups, scaleups, and corporations. He has advised a government on building startup ecosystems and built the nation's digital and design capability.
Izwan builds and leads teams of world-class designers, product managers, engineers. He believes in tying together the user's need, technology's feasibility and business viability to achieve digital evolution's success.
He also co-founded VLT Labs, a venture builder that builds, launches, and invests in startups across South East Asia, Australia, and Europe. His venture builder successfully merged with McKinsey & Company in 2017. As an Expert Associate Partner In McKinsey, Izwan led the design for Digital Labs in Southeast Asia. He has experience delivering impact in education, banking, insurance, energy, and oil & gas sectors.
 
Join us to hear us cover:
- Managing upwards in a corporate environment- Building an in-house designer-friendly ecosystem- Exciting others on the possibilities of design- Building sustainable talent practices: new capabilities and new talent- How do you push yourself to be better as a design leader?

Episode 35: The Value of Innovation and Venture Design with Eyad Hasbullah

Eyad's a venture bricklayer with his recent experience primarily being in the digital sector for energy, renewables, commerce, media and fintech, from early-stage strategy and product concept development to securing resources required to set-up and operationalize new products and services. He tends to surf the sweet spot between product management, business development and technology. He is interested in positive and sustainable change and is energized and enthused by great design and great experiences. Today, he supports the commercialisation aspiration of a large, diversified renewable energy firm in Malaysia.
 
He scored top in the 2020 Oxford Fintech Programme with Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. In 2019 he was invited to join the Advisory Council of Gerson Lehrman Group for Technology, Media and Telecommunications. In 2014 he had an award-winning technical paper published twice (in Malaysia and Australia). He's a Certified Innovation Practitioner and Train The Trainer. He holds a Design Thinking Facilitation certificate from the Copenhagen Institute for Interactive Design. Eyad recently became an accredited Angel Investor. He's based in Kuala Lumpur with his son.
 
Join us to hear us cover:- The parallels of evangelising something abstract like innovation or design in an enterprise- What are the models of innovation at an enterprise?- Communicating value and impact of a mid to long term project- Practical skills Eyad had to acquire to be an innovation or venture leader- Tips to engage senior management and stakeholders