ALLY
HWANG 黃

DESIGN & PRODUCT LEADER

Ally is a design and product leader with over 13 years of experience in UX, product design, and user research. Most recently, she led Product Design at TRAILS, working to help schools deliver mental wellness to K-12 classrooms. She also previously was Head of Product Design at Unstoppable Domains and Design Program Lead in Nationwide’s Enterprise Innovation group. At IBM, she managed a team of 14 that worked on IBM Bluemine— an internal market insights platform that was awarded NNGroup’s 2019 Ten Best Intranets.

Whether on-the-job (or off the job), Ally advocates for accessibility, diversity, inclusivity. She believes in creating positive environments where people can bring their full selves to work, because it shows up in the work we do.

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ABOUT ME

Hi, I’m Ally Hwang. I’m Taiwanese-American, born and raised in the United States. My last name is pronounced like “Hu-ahn.” It means yellow.

In my free time, I love to garden, paint with watercolor, play video games, read comics, watch pro-wrestling, and care for my 50 houseplants.

My labors of love include photography, art illustrations, and videography. I like to make and experiment with different mediums and ideas. You can find my work throughout this website.

Once I took an enneagram test and it told me I was #1: The Perfectionist, to which I critiqued the label for not being exactly accurate to who I am. Take that and do with it what you will.

work experience

Sr. Director, Product Design

TRAILS • 2023-2025

Head of Product Design

Unstoppable Domains • 2022-2023

Design Program Lead, Enterprise Innovation

Nationwide • 2019-2022

Design Manager, Market Development & Insights

IBM • 2015-2019

UX Researcher, Designer

IBM • 2013-2015

Product Development Lead, Custom Products

Casemate • 2012 - 2013

Product Development Specialist

Benchmark Brands • 2011 - 2012

education

Masters, Industrial Design

Georgia Tech • 2009-2012

Bachelors, Industrial Engineering

Georgia Tech • 2005-2009

Certificate, Business Analytics

UC Irvine • 2016-2017

Speaking

Poolygotchi: Play and Save to Achieve Your Goals

PoolyCon • 2023

Our Equitable Future Depends on Forming Inclusive UX Teams NOW!

UX Y’all Conference • 2021

Our Equitable Future Depends on Forming Inclusive UX Teams NOW!

Experience U, Nationwide • 2021

(Un)Bias for Action: Reducing Bias in Your Work

Digital Summit, Nashville • 2021

When Majority Shouldn’t Rule: Inclusive Research By Design

Digital Summit at Home • 2020

Ready for Takeoff: Mission, Modes, and Metrics of Content Migration

Digital Summit, Salt Lake City • 2018

International Women’s Day Panel

IBM, Atlanta • 2018

MD&I By Design: Design Thinking Workshop (8-hour workshop)

IBM Converge, Las Vegas • 2017

IBM Design Thinking Bootcamp for Product Teams: Rapid Prototyping

IBM Design Studios, Austin • 2014-2015

See Ally's full resume

HOW OTHERS DESCRIBE MY LEADERSHIP STYLE

EMPOWERING
In a word = “empowering.” I felt like I could learn and had space to make mistakes with it all being OK.
A LEADER WHO SERVES
Ally is the definition of a servant leader; she is not only growing the product and business, but she places an emphasis on growing people, too. She puts service ahead of self-interest; as a result, the team is smarter, more confident, and capable.
NOT A D!CKHEAD
Strategic. Encouraging. Not a d*ckhead or gaslighter. One of my favorite work experiences (being on a team with Ally).
IN SHORT, AWESOME
In short, awesome! [Ally] allowed people to shine and take the lead on their own work, while being a very strong, reliable, trustworthy leader. Advocacy is a good word too. Patience to teach and mentor, giving us enough direction to move forward without dictating designs.
A BLENDER
Ally blends a depth of design and management experience to inspire her team to product excellence. She adeptly tackles areas with high ambiguity, and works across teams to ensure productive communication and shared goals.
10xer
Under Ally's leadership, we shifted to working in highly communicative, cross-functional teams, and we increased our release cadence tenfold. […] Ally doesn't just guide from above, either. She is deeply selfless and always ready to jump into the weeds to assist her team.
very organized
[Ally is] very organized and tackles problems head-on which I appreciate. [She] collaborates with the team to get the best outcomes. Very inclusive and always seeking feedback.
An Interesting Journey
It was such a joyful and interesting journey to work with Ally. Truly professional, but what is more important emphatic[sic] and open person. In short terms she did excellent work of transforming separated individuals to real dream design team.
A TESTAMENT
Ally's structured and highly visual thinking was evident in her approach to design, resulting in user-friendly and visually compelling products. Moreover, her beloved status among her team was a testament to her outstanding leadership.

EMPOWERING
In a word = “empowering.” I felt like I could learn and had space to make mistakes with it all being OK.
A LEADER WHO SERVES
Ally is the definition of a servant leader; she is not only growing the product and business, but she places an emphasis on growing people, too. She puts service ahead of self-interest; as a result, the team is smarter, more confident, and capable.
NOT A D!CKHEAD
Strategic. Encouraging. Not a d*ckhead or gaslighter. One of my favorite work experiences (being on a team with Ally).
IN SHORT, AWESOME
In short, awesome! [Ally] allowed people to shine and take the lead on their own work, while being a very strong, reliable, trustworthy leader. Advocacy is a good word too. Patience to teach and mentor, giving us enough direction to move forward without dictating designs.
A BLENDER
Ally blends a depth of design and management experience to inspire her team to product excellence. She adeptly tackles areas with high ambiguity, and works across teams to ensure productive communication and shared goals.
10xer
Under Ally's leadership, we shifted to working in highly communicative, cross-functional teams, and we increased our release cadence tenfold. […] Ally doesn't just guide from above, either. She is deeply selfless and always ready to jump into the weeds to assist her team.
very organized
[Ally is] very organized and tackles problems head-on which I appreciate. [She] collaborates with the team to get the best outcomes. Very inclusive and always seeking feedback.
An Interesting Journey
It was such a joyful and interesting journey to work with Ally. Truly professional, but what is more important emphatic[sic] and open person. In short terms she did excellent work of transforming separated individuals to real dream design team.
A TESTAMENT
Ally's structured and highly visual thinking was evident in her approach to design, resulting in user-friendly and visually compelling products. Moreover, her beloved status among her team was a testament to her outstanding leadership.

HOW OTHERS DESCRIBE MY LEADERSHIP STYLE

EMPOWERING
In a word = “empowering.” I felt like I could learn and had space to make mistakes with it all being OK.
A LEADER WHO SERVES
Ally is the definition of a servant leader; she is not only growing the product and business, but she places an emphasis on growing people, too. She puts service ahead of self-interest; as a result, the team is smarter, more confident, and capable.
NOT A D!CKHEAD
Strategic. Encouraging. Not a d*ckhead or gaslighter. One of my favorite work experiences (being on a team with Ally).
IN SHORT, AWESOME
In short, awesome! [Ally] allowed people to shine and take the lead on their own work, while being a very strong, reliable, trustworthy leader. Advocacy is a good word too. Patience to teach and mentor, giving us enough direction to move forward without dictating designs.
A BLENDER
Ally blends a depth of design and management experience to inspire her team to product excellence. She adeptly tackles areas with high ambiguity, and works across teams to ensure productive communication and shared goals.
10xer
Under Ally's leadership, we shifted to working in highly communicative, cross-functional teams, and we increased our release cadence tenfold. […] Ally doesn't just guide from above, either. She is deeply selfless and always ready to jump into the weeds to assist her team.
very organized
[Ally is] very organized and tackles problems head-on which I appreciate. [She] collaborates with the team to get the best outcomes. Very inclusive and always seeking feedback.
An Interesting Journey
It was such a joyful and interesting journey to work with Ally. Truly professional, but what is more important emphatic[sic] and open person. In short terms she did excellent work of transforming separated individuals to real dream design team.
A TESTAMENT
Ally's structured and highly visual thinking was evident in her approach to design, resulting in user-friendly and visually compelling products. Moreover, her beloved status among her team was a testament to her outstanding leadership.

Case studies

TRAILS TO WELLNESS

2024 - 2025

TRAILS began its journey of supporting teachers delivering mental health to K12 classrooms as a University of Michigan project. As the organization and product grew in size and complexity, we needed a brand and web experience that would grow and scale with us.

Our in-house Product Design team partnered with creative agency Wide Eye to execute a full brand refresh and website design of trailstowellness.org.

The rebranded web experience dropped on October 25, 2024!

Check out the live site

NATIONWIDE THREESIXZERO

2020 - 2022

When it comes to insurance, customers are looking for the greatest value for their protection needs, which increasingly translates to low cost. Because many Direct & Digital insurance carriers have limited product offerings, consumers have little option other than to spread their protection needs across multiple companies.

What if customers could purchase all of their protection needs, serviced in one place at a single price?

Read it

ibm bluemine

2017 - 2019

Bluemine is an intranet application that started serving competitive intelligence, market insights, and thought leadership to IBM employees from 2003. Over the course of 14 years, users begin describing the application as hard to navigate and overwhelming in information. With limited resources, efforts to improve user experience upon legacy code felt like patchwork.

So we formed and hired an in-house UX team to help Bluemine simplify the experience of finding and sharing market insights for IBMers employees all around the world.

Read it

publications

AVOIDING EXTINCTION: COMPANIES’ DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION JOURNEYS

2016
We studied the digital transformation initiatives of over 50 leading companies across financial services, healthcare, life sciences, retail, industrial, automotive, energy, and manufacturing industries to identify common themes and practices.

Read It

MASTER'S THESIS: BICYCLE AWARENESS SYSTEM

2012
Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technology is becoming a market standard in the auto industry. My graduate design thesis explores retrofitting older cars and bikes with V2V hardware so that women bicycle commuters, who are typically outnumbered by men 3 to 1, can take back their share of their road.

Read It