Yi Tang of Amazon on Bridging the Gap Between Web Systems and Mobile Realities

I first heard about the MUSE Creative Awards from a friend who won a Gold last year. That made me wonder whether I should give it a try myself—and the answer was yes.

The thoughtful reason is that enterprise UX is often invisible because the tools are internal, yet the challenges are huge: aligning user needs with business processes, policies, and technical constraints. I submitted to MUSE to spotlight that impact and to help more people recognize the power of enterprise design.

Winning is validating. It allows friends and family—who don’t always know exactly what UX designers do—to see independent recognition of impact. Professionally, it strengthens my portfolio and credibility for future talks and collaborations. (And yes, it’s already on my résumé!)

This began like many enterprise projects: UX, Product, and Tech partnering with a major U.S. manufacturer to improve inventory management and service-order fulfillment. The real breakthroughs came from field research. Frontline staff walked me through their days—picking parts, unpacking shipments, racing against time—and they were candid about their pain points.

I translated physical reality into the digital experience: tasks were arranged to follow a one-direction walking path, and work items mirrored the actual structure of shipment containers. That cut both physical and cognitive effort. To me, it represents where enterprise UX is headed—rapid implementation (even with “vibe-coding” and AI-assisted build tools), tailored to how people truly work, and increasingly agentic with AI supporting judgment in context.

Great enterprise UX makes software match the way the world actually works.

I designed for the entire human workflow, not just the interface. Strategically, we packaged end-to-end inventory and fulfillment into a single mobile experience for workers who are always in motion. The details mattered: shorter aisle paths for picking, interfaces that reflect how shipments are actually unpacked, and flows that respect workers’ mental models. It’s classic user-centered design—executed with the realities of the floor in mind.

One of the toughest challenges I can recall was creating a way for users to easily understand how to choose the right version of parts. Choosing the right part version was deceptively hard. We couldn’t simply force a default pick; we had to enable informed, high-judgment decisions—balancing inventory health with service speed. I immersed myself in the rules, then iterated on visuals that distilled compatibility, priority, and version lineage into simple, glanceable cues.

Staying close to end users and stakeholders gave us rapid feedback loops. The result was a clear interface that helps workers quickly decide which version to use for each scenario—a practical win for both fulfillment and inventory.

This award program is an objective signal of quality. It strengthens my portfolio and personal brand, especially as I explore opportunities in speaking, teaching, or selective client work. I’ve already noticed more engaged conversations—people are curious about the behind-the-scenes story of how we solved such a complex problem.

Most folks weren’t surprised by the win—only that I hadn’t submitted sooner. The recognition affirmed what collaborators already felt: this kind of quiet, high-impact enterprise work deserves the spotlight.

Treat your entry like a great design presentation: a clear problem, a focused solution, and tangible impact. Keep jargon low and stakes high. Be concise, be human, and anchor everything in real user outcomes.

Tools and technologies change constantly, and right now AI is front and center. I see UX shifting from “perfect pixels” to framing the right problems, making thoughtful trade-offs, and guiding AI to serve human needs responsibly.

That shift demands strong product sense, cross-functional communication, and a deeper understanding of how AI works—and how people should work with it. I’m building methods for trustworthy, agentic AI experiences so teams can focus more on design thinking and less on manual production.

Start with a project you genuinely loved—one where you made many thoughtful decisions. Those choices are your story. When you explain them clearly, the narrative writes itself, and that’s what wins over both judges and journalists.

Engage with the community. Events, critiques, and casual conversations sharpen your taste and help you understand where you stand across design’s wide spectrum. Much of what I’ve learned has come from other designers.

My Product Manager. He created the space and timing for design to lead, partnered closely on planning and delivery, and championed quality through implementation. Great Product Manager plus great UX is a force multiplier.

A mobile-first inventory tool that mirrors real-world structures and actions, streamlining order fulfillment with clear, intuitive digital workflows.

Why: My users are always moving and handling physical objects. Closing the gap between digital tools and the physical world allows them to work intuitively—without having to bend to rigid software.

Company-wise, I’m working on an AI-driven project that helps users make high-judgment decisions in the world of HR operations. I’m grateful to be at a company that gives me the opportunity to design AI features that end users can adopt quickly and translate into real impact.

On the creative side, I’m reviving an older AI project that helps people with different personalities socialize more effectively—a way to use AI to improve real-world social interactions. I’m also planning another personal project, also AI-related, but more critical in nature. It will explore how people might interact with AI in the future and spark deeper conversations about those relationships.