Website: https://www.allyhwang.com/ (pw: onlynugs)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hwangallison/
Summary
I'm a design and product leader who believes that empowering talent and team is the foundation of great work. Across industries from enterprise software to education, I build mature design practices to accelerate product development while preserving quality. I bring structure to ambiguity— whether collaborating with strategic partners, establishing key success metrics, or implementing frameworks that improve team effectiveness. I've built and grown teams that have delivered 4x award-winning solutions— from IBM’s market insights platform to Nationwide’s innovative insurance quote experience.
Professional Experience
Senior Director, Product Design
TRAILS (Oct 2023 - April 2025)
Before I joined: Product team released incremental improvements once every six months. Designers lacked team ceremonies and didn’t have a product roadmap or vision to anchor on
- Increased product delivery cadence from bi-annual releases to two-week sprints by implementing accountability measures that maintain quality of mental health delivery to K12 classrooms while improving team velocity and collaboration across departments
- Grew leadership confidence in decision making by highlighting user insights and product data through product monthly reports shared org-wide, building transparency and accountability tracking to both business goals and user needs
- Matured design and research practices for a team of 4 product designers through formal design operations (critique sessions, design system governance, research repositories) that reduced product inconsistencies while increasing team capabilities
- Led strategic initiatives through the entire product development cycle, crafting PRDs and owning a Communications Strategy that drove effective collaboration between Design, Engineering, and Content teams
- Orchestrated a full brand refresh and website in partnership with external agency Wide Eye, providing strategic direction while ensuring consistent implementation across the customer platform
UX and Design Consultant
Self-employed (Dec 2022 - Oct 2023)
Challenge: Early-stage organizations with limited resources needed strategic design guidance to establish product-market fit
- Turned market ambiguity into clear opportunity by conducting targeted user research for Serotonin's first in-house web platform, revealing unmet needs of web3 founders
- Accelerated time-to-market for PoolTogether DAO by designing a Tamagotchi-style savings game that went from concept to Optimism testnet launch in just 3 months
- Provided art direction, photography, and web design for Selfability’s measuring cups to help people with autism build cooking skills
Head of Product Design