Hi, I’m Alla (she/her). I design holistic human-centric experiences for IoT-connected products to drive product innovation and user-centric culture. I also have a passion and experience for building and leading high-performing design teams and evangelizing efficient design processes.
I help to establish a design culture that connects people to make connected products more human-centric. I’m deeply passionate about integrating user-centered design and systems thinking into a design-driven product development process. I see this as the best way to create meaningful products that users love and that help make their lives more convenient and secure.
I currently help Yale and August Home and Master Lock to design the best experiences for smart security devices.
Things I love
Reading
Reading is a form of meditation for me. I read a few books at the same time and keep a thoughtfully curated list to track my favorites and future reads. My interests span across subjects such as design, business, entrepreneurship, leadership, people management, self-management, performance, longevity, and health.
I’m currently reading “Palo Alto. A History of California, Capitalism, and The World“ by Malcolm Harris and “Genesis. AI, Hope, and The Human Spirit“ by Henry Kissinger, Craig Mundie, Eric Schmidt.
Listening to podcasts
Listening to podcasts about longevity, neuroscience, and performance serves as a powerful source of motivation for me to prioritize self-care and consistently operate at my optimal level. Among my current favorites are:
In-door bike riding and calisthenics
A weekly in-door bike riding while listening to Animals as Leaders, Sleep Token, Unprocessed, Polyphia, or one of my favorite podcasts helps me to maintain my health.
Practicing calisthenics is something that humbles me every time I make an attempt to learn a new skill such as L-sit or a push-up progression. It serves as a powerful reminder that every skill requires time, effort, and dedication to both build and maintain.
My 4k weeks poster and my WHOOP
I’m very intentional with my time and I keep my 4K weeks poster in my home office as a daily reminder to live a life of purpose and meaning.
I always wear a WHOOP—my quiet assistant and one of my favorite smart connected devices that helps me monitor, understand, and improve my health, performance, and habits.
Contributions to the design community
I believe that great products are built through the collective efforts of great teams. I like collecting different practices and tools that foster collaborative dynamics and help build high-performing teams. I believe that play is an amazing opportunity to foster and exercise collaboration with other human beings and cultivate a positive team culture thereby empowering design teams to create products that people love.
My small collection of remote team-building games and templates for design workshops is published as templates in Figma Community.
Quick and effective warm-up activity to get everyone into a collaborative spirit and to explore unconventional social interactions. For remote and in-person play.
Wolves and Sheep is an exercise in cooperative competition. Each turn, choose: are you a Wolf or a Sheep? The survival of the group depends on what everyone picked.
The Lean UX Canvas is a tool that can be used as a practical guide to understand the current scenario of business and user needs. It also helps in creating hypotheses to validate via research.
Modding Tic-Tac-Toe is a great exercise for a remote team-building activity. Take a classic game of Tic-Tac-Toe, change some rules, and see what happens. An introduction to modifying, designing, and communicating systems.
Testemonials
'“…As a team leader, she sets high expectations of herself and other designers and meets them, raising the bar on quality and productivity for the entire product team. She brings a balance of traits to advance the business: individual skill and team leadership, keen intellect and cultural intelligence, thoughtful creativity and operational rigor, attentiveness to practice and theory, mindfulness of shipping immediate products and platform reuse. She works naturally, end-to-end, from discovery through delivery, balancing usability and feasibility throughout development…”
Lance Peterson, Vice President of Product Management at Fortune Brand Innovations
“Alla is a designer to look up to and an amazing manager. With her incredible attention to detail and all-around knowledge of user-centric design, there's not one use case that she doesn't think of in designing a user experience, from OOBE to app flows. Her design-thinking skills are top-notch and she has been a great role model and inspiration to her team that she successfully manages. I've been learning a lot from Alla, and I'm really grateful to her as a leader for recognizing my strengths and supporting me in growing and improving my own skills.”
Sasha Gomon, Senior Product Designer at Fortune Brand Innovations
Certification & Training
Entrepreneurship Essentials
Harvard Business School Online
Issued June 2024
This certificate program, designed and taught by William Sahlman, introduced me to a framework—People, Opportunity, Context, Deal—to evaluate opportunities, manage start-ups, and finance ventures.
Power and Influence for Positive Impact
Harvard Business School Online
Issued June 2024
This certificate program, designed and taught by Julia Battilana, helped me understand how power works and how to develop the power to make a positive impact within professional relationships, organizations, and society.
Listening Deeply, Foundational Course and Live Practice Group, by Indi Young
Completed April 2024
This program, designed and taught by Indi Young, introduced me to a framework and techniques for understanding a person’s interior cognition to develop cognitive empathy that allows finding patterns that will reveal gaps and inclusive, intentional direction for design and business decisions.
User Interface with SwiftUI
Coursera, authorized by Meta
Issued November 2023
This certificate program helped me to learn the foundations of building user interfaces for iOS using SwiftUI framework.
Negotiation Mastery
Harvard Business School Online
Issued August 2023
This certificate program, designed and taught by Michael Wheeler, helped me to learn strategies for forging agreements, resolving disputes, and cultivating interpersonal skills essential to productive working relationships.
Strategy Execution
Harvard Business School Online
Issued April 2023
This certificate program, designed and taught by Robert Simons, introduced me to the tools and frameworks on how to allocate resources, measure performance, manage risk, and successfully implement strategy.
Leadership Principles
Harvard Business School Online
Issued November 2022
This certificate program, designed and taught by Joshua Margolis and Anthony Mayo, introduced me to the fundamental work of leadership: how to unleash the potential in others and cultivate high-performing teams.