About

Main bio

‎‎I'm Akanksha a Sr. UX designer in Denver, CO.

‎‎I'm Akanksha a Sr. UX designer in Denver, CO.

‎‎I'm Akanksha a Sr. UX designer in Denver, CO.

Walmart runs on suppliers and merchants. Tens of thousands of them, each managing their own piece of a system that wasn't really designed to work together. My job was to figure out what they actually needed — not what the roadmap assumed they needed. I designed the AI Action Center: a framework that brought supplier and merchant workflows into a shared space, surfaced the right actions at the right time, and stopped making people hunt through five tools to do one thing. It sounds clean in retrospect. Getting there meant talking to people who were frustrated, sitting inside processes that made no sense, and asking questions that didn't have good answers yet.

The harder part was designing for what the system would become, not just what it was. AI was already doing work behind the scenes. The question was how to make that legible — how to give people enough visibility and control that they could trust it, and enough automation that they didn't have to touch everything manually. There wasn't a playbook for that. We were writing it. What shipped saved real time. Hours that suppliers and merchants used to spend on repetitive task work — handled. The framework also laid the foundation for agentic workflows: the kind where the system doesn't just suggest the next action, it can take it.

Currently, I'm at Walmart working on experiences for Supplier and Merchants. Before that, I spent almost two years at Mastercard helping clients with Mastercard data and services to enhance their businesses, via Mastercard analysis tool and built a 0-1 product specifically for users in China.

a man (it's me)
it's me

When I'm not designing, you'll find me thinking about why some interfaces feel intuitive and others make you want to throw your laptop out a window. Usually with coffee. Yoga and Mediatation keeps me sane, Breathe for a minute and you will feel that stress flying away.

When I'm not designing, you'll find me thinking about why some interfaces feel intuitive and others make you want to throw your laptop out a window. Usually with coffee. Yoga and Mediatation keeps me sane, Breathe for a minute and you will feel that stress flying away.

About Akanksha

What dive into my work

Starting with why, not what

Before jumping into wireframes, I want to understand what problem we're actually solving. Sometimes the thing people ask for isn't the thing they need. My favorite projects start with good questions and end with solutions that feel obvious in hindsight.

think first, draw later.
no perfect world here!

Designing for real constraints

Perfect conditions don't exist. Budgets are tight, timelines are aggressive, legacy systems are messy, and sometimes you just can't talk to users directly. I'm comfortable making smart decisions with imperfect information and finding creative solutions within real limitations.

Collaboration over hero design

The best work happens when designers, engineers, and product folks are actually talking to each other—not throwing things over the wall. I genuinely enjoy the back-and-forth of figuring out what's possible, what's practical, and what's going to create the most value.

we, not me.
details build trust.

Making the invisible visible

Some of the most impactful design work isn't flashy—it's the progress indicator that keeps people oriented, the auto-save that prevents panic, the validation message that actually helps instead of just saying 'error.' These details build trust.

My story

What dive into my work

My Journey

Timeline

Walmart

Designing across merchant and supplier tools: item creation workflows, an AI Action Center with agentic task flows, a Supplier Performance Dashboard, a mobile app for suppliers on iOS and Android, and AR/VR workflow exploration. The core challenge is balancing what suppliers need against what merchants need — often very different things — in service of the same goal: getting an item to a Walmart aisle in less time, at less cost, and at better quality.

Feb 2025 - Current

Mastercard

Enterprise analytics products for clients who couldn't afford a confusing dashboard. Shipped a Campaign Dashboard under a high-stakes deadline and won trust from four major clients in China. Taught me a lot about designing under pressure for people you'll never meet.

Aug 2022 - Dec 2023

Globant

ML-powered documentation workflows that saved the team 120+ hours a month. My first real lesson in how much a well-designed system can quietly do for people — without anyone noticing it's even doing it.

Aug 2021 - Aug 2022

Capgemini

Where it started. Visual design on a UBS client project, learning the discipline of component-driven thinking, clean handoffs, and what it actually takes to make design work at scale.

June 2019 - Aug 2021

Let's Talk

I'm most energized by projects where I can dig into complex problems, collaborate with smart people, and ship things that genuinely improve someone's day.

Comment

Akanksha Kulkarni

Open to contract work, full-time roles, and interesting conversations about hard design problems.

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