Meet Yandis Ying, TableCheck’s Creative Director. In this exclusive interview, Yandis talks about her passion for brand and design, her life as a working mother, and how she is carving her path as a woman in the field of tech.

What is it like working for TableCheck as a Creative Director?

Design is my area of expertise, and I’ve been working as a creative director for almost 10 years now. My job is to enable TableCheck's potential through design. Aside from building a really good team in order to be productive and create the best-in-class design, as a people manager my strength is to also motivate my team members to go beyond and above. It’s not just about clocking in and out. I want them to really think about what we could achieve—that’s what real Creative Management is about.

What is design management?

With design management, we think about the users–I care about the user experience more than anything. My role is to always become the voice of the user to make sure that what we do is the right thing. If users have a negative experience then that’s not right.

Design is also by nature a solution-driven process. It’s like problem-solving. We aim to make things faster, quicker, easier, nicer, more engaging, and so on. Design offers a solution and speaks for the audience.

What kind of design projects have you worked on in the past?

I’ve always been in the digital design landscape, and I’ve won a couple of awards for my clients in the past. For example, I rebranded the digital presence for Natwest and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). We didn’t just change the colors of their logo, but my team and I actually revisited their entire branding to make sure that their message was being digitally expressed in the right way.

The second project I had was with Unilever, which has been a client of mine for over four years and where I was the Global Creative lead. Unilever is a consumer product company, and it pushes for purpose-driven brands. They don’t want a brand to represent a product, but a purpose instead.

I also worked with this company called Sunsilk. With them I launched a campaign called “Together We Rock”, celebrating the diversity of women.

I’m keen to incorporate more personal stories in our future campaigns at TableCheck, because I think there are many stories to be told from the F&B industry.

How are you balancing work and parenthood?

It’s hard and I think it is for every parent. With parenthood, there’s never a deadline that ends, and you just have to keep ongoing. I definitely miss my time, before the baby sometimes.

[However], it has also given me good experience to talk about women in tech, particularly female parents in tech. There are so many reasons why women give up their careers. Tech is also male-dominated —although  it’s now better than 10 years ago. That’s why it’s been really important for me to find solutions to how I can have a good work-life balance as a working mother.

It's International Women's Day. As a female leader in your field, what does IWD mean to you?

In this crazy but memorable time, I am particularly focusing on creating a design environment that can push for meaningful and purposeful work. As a full-time working mother, I want to embrace inclusiveness and diversity through TableCheck to support any talents to create great work that will change life for the better society, regardless of better balance on gender, race, age, different life stages, and many more.

You're living in London, managing a team that's based all over the world, how is that working out for you?

TableCheck is fully remote within the IT department, and that has really helped me because I don’t have to spend time commuting [to work]. I can also be more flexible with my time–like just now I dropped my daughter off at school and the next minute I’m [doing this interview].

How important are diversity and inclusion in the workplace?

I think TableCheck does very well with diversity and inclusion.

I think TableCheck took that choice and took it very seriously and successfully. Everyone respects our diversity. Obviously, we have slightly different views about what’s good and what’s bad, but we are open to listening. I also really enjoy working with my Japanese colleagues because they are very respectful. And even though I don’t speak Japanese, I feel welcomed.

Hopefully, there will be more women and parents to join TableCheck, and I want to continue to be that person to give all the new joiners the confidence that they can do it.

What was it like for you to work on the rebranding of TableCheck?

When I joined, TableCheck was a startup with a lot of ambitions. It's very focused on creating technology for hospitality and creating these functionalities on our restaurant management platform for our customers. That was really exciting for me because I generally wanted to know more about the food and beverage industry.

For the TableCheck rebranding, I wanted to create something that embodies the dining experience. The dining experience starts when [customers] search for ideas, then the right cuisine and right venues, then you get your parties and friends excited about this upcoming gathering. I wanted to connect the dots and interpret the brand values that TableCheck has.

I worked alongside lead designer Richard McCracken who has done great work on the design. We won't be able to push this beautiful boat out without him.

What is the significance of the ring in our new branding?

It's about that moment that people connect together. Our TableCheck logo, in the middle, implies a round table. The ring or circle means proficiency and creates this kind of movement, altogether making it such a strong element. This ring just works on many levels–it's very tappable as a gesture on mobile devices, on information architecture, on key visuals, marketing, etc. It also feels like there are so many interpretations that can tell the right story about TableCheck. We are treating the ring in many ways, particularly to connect the dots between the merchants and the diners.