Allen Wang
2025–present: Senior service designer at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
2023–2025: Master in Design Studies (Ecologies), Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
• Capstone fieldwork in Nepal (5 weeks), plus 2 months of other fieldwork in Japan, Morocco, India, Texas, Florida, and New York.
• 2024 Bloomberg Harvard Summer Fellow (in Newport News, Virginia, on generative AI for city service transformation).
2021–2023: Service designer in the Government of Canada (Statistics Canada, Shared Services Canada).
2021–present: Freelance research consultant for non-profit organizations.
2016–2020: Bachelor of Design with Distinction (Industrial Design), OCAD University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• 2019 exchange semester to Designskolen Kolding, Denmark, with 40+ days backpacking around Europe.
Adventure-seeker, classical musician, digital photographer, creative writer, history nerd, and avid Wikipedia reader....
I’m a problem-solver and lifelong learner with an eclectic schema and a love for speculative, avant-garde thinking.
I am interested in how individuals perceive systems that are greater than ourselves and which we can never fully understand due to their complicatedness, complexity, and ambiguity. Though I didn't realize it at the time, this started with my bachelor's thesis on rethinking systems of measurement through the human body. My master's thesis looked at perceptions of the environment, touching on climate skepticism, pollution, and ecotourism. And my professional work as a service designer looks at how users perceive institutions (be it the government or the university) and how to align stakeholders on a shared view of improving the experiences of the people they serve.
I maintain a broad spattering of interests across classical music, digital photography, languages, environmental anthropology, modern literature, continental philosophy, critical theory, psychology, art/design history, contemporary art, and so forth. I read Wikipedia for fun. I love telling stories. I’ve been working on a novel on-and-off for the past fifteen years so or. In the current iteration, it’s a recollection of sequences from my high school years, particularly some of the biking adventures I used to go on. But in reverse-chronological order.
