Thirteen years designing at the intersection of research, systems and engineering. Currently Principal UX Designer for Walmart Health & Wellness.

Michael David Watson

Currently

I lead end-to-end design for Walmart Health & Wellness, covering Pharmacy and clinical experiences across web, native and conversational surfaces. The work reaches millions of customers managing real healthcare needs.

It is regulated and high-stakes by nature: consent flows, authenticated dashboards, clinical scheduling, pharmacy onboarding. I own those initiatives from discovery through stakeholder sign-off, grounded in audits, journey mapping and longitudinal store-level interviews.

Alongside delivery I contribute to the Living Design system, mentor designers, and help stand up the team’s AI-assisted design practice.

What’s next

I’ve worked alongside cognitive and ML systems since IBM Watson in 2016. The tools keep changing. The design question doesn’t. How do you make a probabilistic, opaque system feel trustworthy, controllable and genuinely useful in a real user’s hands?

I’m investing deeply in AI-assisted design workflows, agentic prototyping, LLM-integrated UX patterns and conversational interfaces. The next decade of UX will be shaped by designers who can fluently work with these systems instead of waiting for them to settle.

Skillset

Core craft, with a sharpening edge toward AI.

Practice

  • Design Thinking
  • Information Architecture
  • Interaction Design
  • User Journey Mapping
  • User Research
  • Usability Testing
  • A/B Testing
  • Accessibility Standards

Craft

  • Figma
  • Design Systems
  • Prototyping
  • Wireframing
  • Responsive Design
  • Agile Methodologies

AI & emerging

  • AI-Assisted Design Workflows
  • AI Product Strategy
  • Agentic Prototyping
  • Generative AI Tooling
  • LLM-Integrated UX
  • Conversational UX
  • Prompt Engineering

Experience

Fortune 100 platforms, scrappy startups, and the long bets in between.

  1. Oct 2024 — Present

    Walmart Health & Wellness

    Principal UX Designer · Bentonville, AR

    Leading end-to-end design for multi-surface patient journeys across Pharmacy and Health & Wellness. Owning regulated work across consent, authenticated dashboards, clinical scheduling and pharmacy onboarding. Helping establish AI-assisted design practices for the team.

  2. Mar 2023 — Oct 2024

    Sam’s Club

    Lead UX Designer · In-Club Experiences → Sr. UX Designer · Enterprise Design Systems → Sr. Product Designer · Merchant Enablement · Austin, TX

    Three consecutive roles spanning kiosk design, design systems and merchant tooling. Led the foundational color and typography system for Sam’s, including a 190-shade WCAG-compliant palette aligned to the Walmart Living Design library.

  3. May 2022 — Mar 2023

    Walmart Global Tech

    Sr. UX Designer · Austin, TX

    Vetted and refined enterprise design system components through the Material to Walmart Living Design transition. Unified sourcing and supplier workflows informed by international listening sessions.

  4. Nov 2021 — Apr 2022

    8fig

    Lead Product Designer · Austin, TX

    Principal Design Lead scoping the product vision for a financial planning tool. Hired and mentored junior designers. Onboarding work drove +30% MoM new-user conversion.

  5. Sep 2020 — Nov 2021

    PayPal

    Lead UX Designer · Austin, TX

    Owned design across developer.paypal.com: 1,800+ pages, a new responsive design system, and a re-envisioned IA built around developer use cases. Full case study in Work.

  6. May 2019 — Aug 2020

    Charles Schwab

    Sr. UX Designer · Austin, TX

    Modernization work on the Digital Asset Transfer platform. Partnered with content, research and accessibility on schwab.com.

  7. Dec 2018 — Apr 2019

    Under Armour

    Sr. UI / UX Designer · Austin, TX

    Sole designer on the Unified Profile initiative, clarifying user identity across UA mobile apps on iOS and Android.

  8. Apr 2018 — Nov 2018

    RigUp

    Product Designer · Austin, TX

    Spearheaded the modernization of RigUp’s mobile applications across native iOS and Android.

  9. Jun 2017 — Mar 2018

    Ernst & Young

    Lead Product Designer · Atlanta, GA

    Consulted across multiple service lines, building enterprise software for decentralized and remote teams.

  10. Aug 2016 — May 2017

    IBM · The Weather Company

    Lead Product Designer · Atlanta, GA

    Re-envisioned the responsive desktop experience and worked alongside the Watson cognitive platform. An early look at how ML could assist design.

  11. Nov 2015 — May 2016

    Addepar

    Product Designer · NYC

    Mentored junior designers and helped modernize Addepar’s interaction guidelines through a multi-level critique culture.

  12. Jun 2015 — Oct 2015

    Amazon Lab126

    UX Production Designer · Devices · Seattle, WA

    Authored and contributed to UX guidelines for Fire TV and Fire Tablet platforms. Production design across device-specific surfaces.

  13. Jun 2014 — Jun 2015

    Microsoft

    Product Designer · Redmond, WA

    Reworked design for Office 365 Video (launched to 16M+ customers) and led Android Material thinking for OneDrive.

  14. Nov 2013 — Jun 2014

    Schakra

    UX / UI Design Director · Redmond, WA

    Revitalized the Schakra identity and championed mobile accessibility, reporting directly to the VP of Engineering.

Education

Trained as an advertiser. Re-wired as an interaction designer.

  • Savannah College of Art and Design

    BA, Advertising Design · Minor in Interaction & Game Design · 2011

  • Oakland Community College

    Associate of Arts, Liberal Arts & Sciences · 2007

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