Willa Yu
Get in touch
Email
willayu1999@gmail.com
LinkedIn
@wei-yu

Hello, I'm Willa Yu

A 0–1 product designer with 4+ years of experience

most problems are structural before they're visual complexity isn't something to hide, it's something to organize good design is mostly decisions you don't see the best interfaces feel obvious, because the hard part happened earlier

View project
Production Schedule Planning and sequencing work across the shop floor
View project
Operator View One screen for the person at the machine, built inside the ERP
View project
Machine Monitoring The first tool built on ProShop's AI-native platform
Under construction
Custom Labels Configurable labeling for parts and packaging
Under construction
Multicurrency Solution Defining the financial lifecycle for international trade

About me

Where did you start your design journey?
Somewhere else entirely — I trained as an architect. It just turned out to be the same problem.
How does an architecture student end up a product designer?
Architecture is about how people flow through a space, and how something built to last decades has to get its bones right before anyone cares how it looks. Software wanted exactly the same thing.
Anything that pulled you toward UX?
Interfaces that didn’t behave like flat screens — VR, AR, environments you move through instead of scroll past. That’s when interaction stopped being about pixels for me, and started being about how something responds when someone expects it to make sense.
And what are you working on now?
Software at ProShop ERP — production scheduling, operations, quality and compliance. The unglamorous parts of a shop floor that everything else depends on. Same problem, different place to stand.
What are you strongest at?
B2B SaaS Enterprise Tools AI-native UX End-to-end Workflow Information Architecture Interaction Design User Research Product Thinking
And what does life look like outside of work?
Louder than the work does. There’s a cat asleep somewhere she shouldn’t be, a canvas half-finished against the wall, and something proving on the counter. Easier to show you — pick a tab.

Art

A watercolour of a village lane: tiled roofs stepping down the frame, red lanterns hung along the eaves, dense green foliage above.
Turns out roofs are a grid problem
An oil pastel of a park in blossom — a pagoda and a stone bridge under a peach sky, magenta and blue flowers crowding the foreground.
Oil pastel, restraint optional
A watercolour of a single cottage beneath a dark mass of trees, a pale road curving away through the foreground.
Watercolor: no undo, no layers
A watercolour of a farm village under a heavy blue storm sky, cattle grazing across a bright green field.
Mostly sky. That was the point.

Pet

A Devon Rex cat sitting in a compact loaf on a sofa cushion, looking up at the camera.
Loaf mode, fully proofed
A Devon Rex cat sitting inside a tote bag with both front paws hooked over the edge.
Every bag is a cat container
A Devon Rex cat stretched out on a window hammock, head tipped back.
The window seat is taken
A Devon Rex cat lying upside down across a cushion with her paws in the air.
Cushion, reviewed upside down

Games

An Animal Crossing island: a villager on a wooden boardwalk beside a river, cherry trees and a shrine behind.
Turns out I zone islands for fun
A Dark Souls III screenshot — the player character on a castle rampart, arms raised, under a solar eclipse.
Praise the sun. Died anyway.
A Lego model of the Firelink Shrine from Dark Souls, with a coiled-sword bonfire and a knight figure.
Firelink Shrine, no instructions
A Hello Kitty and Friends Monopoly board with Sanrio banknotes and property cards spread out beside it.
Cute board. Ruthless landlord.

Hiking

A figure silhouetted on sandstone tide pools at the shore of Gabriola Island under a deep blue sky.
Gabriola, where the map runs out
A figure standing on Quarry Rock above Deep Cove with both arms out, the inlet and forested islands below.
Quarry Rock, arms out, obligatory
A small distant figure paddleboarding on wide gray water with layered mountains behind.
Attempt one. Stayed dry, barely.
Standing upright on a blue paddleboard in a cove ringed by evergreens.
By now, upright on purpose

Food

Pressed aburi sushi on slate — flame-seared salmon with jalapeño, radish and crisp fried shallots.
Aburi. I will not be sharing.
A wide bowl of Sichuan boiled beef in chilli oil, scattered with peppercorns and green chillies.
House policy: more chili
A hot pot spread — a split broth pot ringed by sliced meat, rice cakes, enoki mushrooms, tofu and cabbage.
Hot pot. Winter, solved.
Steak tacos on a plate with purple cabbage, tortilla chips and salsa verde, made in a cooking class.
Made these myself, supervised

How I move the needle

Design from the inside out

I start with structure — how workflows, decisions, and constraints connect — before shaping interfaces. Good products come from sound underlying systems, not polished screens.

Systems over screens

I work at several levels at once — features, flows, and the relationships between them.

Built for what comes next

Today's structure has to hold up under tomorrow's change.

+18% activation

Design tied to the business

Every system maps back to a metric or a decision someone is trying to make.