ALLY HWANG

PRODUCT DESIGN & UX RESEARCH LEADER

Ally is a design & research leader with over 12 years of experience in UX and product design. Currently, she leads Product Design a TRAILS, working to help schools deliver mental wellness to K-12 classrooms. Previously, she 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 a Taiwanese-American, born and raised in the United States. My last name is pronounced like “Hu-ahn.” It means “yellow” in Chinese.

In my free time, I often paint with watercolor, play video games, read comics, 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

Product Design Director
TRAILS • 2023-present

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

 

HOW OTHERS DESCRIBE MY LEADERSHIP STYLE

Case studies

TRAILS

2023-2024

TRAILS began its journey of supporting teachers delivering mental health to K12 classrooms as a University of Michigan project. As we grow 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 Wide Eye to execute a full brand refresh and website design of trailstowellness.org.

Case study TBD— our new web experience dropped on October 25, 2024!

 
 
 
 

UNSTOPPABLE DOMAINS

2022-2023

Unstoppable Domains is working toward a future where everyone owns their identity. To get there, we started with: onboarding people into web3 with their own domain; providing education on access and usage; and making it easy for developers and partners to build domain-based products.

 

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?

 
 
 

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.

 
 

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 practice.

  • MASTER'S THESIS: BICYCLE AWARENESS

    2012

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

shit i’m into