# Avril W Hsu > Human-centered AI at Dell | AI Product Builder, Researcher, Enabler | Author and Speaker | Views are my own Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/avril My journey into human-centered AI began early: as an only child captivated by sci-fi, I was fascinated by the idea of a robot companion, a responsive copilot that could help me accomplish more. It evolved into a career focused on building technology that meaningfully supports people. Over the past two decades, this focus has carried me through multiple waves of technological transformation, shipping products and services rooted in human needs. In the AI era, my core mission is the same, but the toolkit is now predictive, generative, and agentic AI. What’s new is an added layer of enablement and education that help teams and individuals adopt AI with confidence and measurable outcomes. My day-to-day work within the technology office starts with finding the right mix of AI capabilities to solve the right problem. From there, I build pilots by parsing real workflows, learning model behavior, and turning failure data into quality metrics and recovery patterns that strengthen human-AI collaboration. I then convert validated pilots into roadmap-ready requirements and enablement that accelerate enterprise modernization and consistent adoption. I extend this field-tested loop through academia, teaching and researching to stay current on advanced AI/ML. Drawing from these insights, I speak and write about AI: cutting through hype and fear with a balanced, evidence-based view that demystifies common narratives. My goal is to help professionals and enterprises grasp AI’s implications and capitalize on opportunities for real-world impact. My work has been recognized by 18 international awards, including IDEA, iF, and Red Dot. Made possible through close partnership with C-level execs and multidisciplinary, cross-sector SMEs, bringing my expertise in 0-to-1 product incubation enabling scenarios previously impossible with earlier tech. Together, we advance technical innovation and elevate the human experience. Today, I carry this approach into the new wave, baking in the nuances of modern AI. I’ve had the opportunity to help drive Fortune 50 enterprise AI modernization, scaling proven practices across corporate, industry, education. _____________________________________ My posts are my own and do not reflect the opinions of my current, past, or future employers. ## Work Experience ### Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Human-centered AI at Digital CTO Office @ Dell Technologies Jan 2024 – Present | Santa Clara, CA In Dell’s Digital CTO Office, I build 0-to-1 agentic AI products at enterprise scale , serving as both a technical product manager and solution architect from vision through rollout. This work contributes to Dell’s AI transformation by redefining how developers build and ship AI products in collaboration with domain experts—with AI as a co-builder. My focus is to make human–AI collaboration seamless by designing the agentic orchestration layer, the reason, plan, act logic across applications, and to make these experiences reliable and trustworthy for probabilistic AI behavior through GenUI patterns, evaluation systems, and quality metrics that drive continuous improvement. • Research & Build: Agentic AI across natural language interface chat, terminal, IDE, and apps; task-allocation automation experiments; Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) path and recovery UX; generative engine optimization (GEO) for developer community content. • Enable: Ethical AI principles; responsible AI practices for product development and innovation incubation, including demos, panels, training, and mentoring. ### Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, User Experience, Emerging Tech and Innovation @ Dell Technologies Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | Santa Clara, California, United States Nominated by my business unit and inducted into Dell’s Pan-Dell Technical Leadership Council, an industry-recognized fellow program representing the top 3% of Dell engineering. In this role, I translated emerging technology signals into hypothesis-led proof-of-concepts, validating real-world usability and reliability, and carrying what holds up into product and platform decisions for consumer and commercial customers. My focus was to turn frontier innovation into small, testable bets that can scale across Dell’s portfolio. • Research & Build: Generative AI assistant for enterprise decision acceleration, trust and auditability architecture, U.S. patent granted; multimodal interaction designs for Dell’s digital human AI assistant in the consumer experiences; next-gen consumer experience vision & strategy • Enable: 100K+ employee education materials including digital-human UX video talks, a co-authored emerging-tech UX white paper, and emerging tech mentoring. ### Group Experience Design Manager, SaaS @ Dell Technologies Jan 2019 – Jan 2022 | Austin, Texas, United States Appointed to stand up a global team for Dell’s new SaaS and subscription business spanning a new four-product platform and responsible for 0-to-1 concept-to-market delivery.I led a multidisciplinary team creating vision and strategy, developing products through end-to-end journey design across five personas: consumer, SMB, enterprise administrators, channel partners, auditors. • Research & Build: Configuration recommendation engine; security controls; speech-to-text notes-taking app; closed-loop evaluation cycle. • Enable: Feedback system creation to surface user needs and identify friction for product priorities; UI & interaction pattern platform to increase consistency and delivery velocity and to reduce time-to-market; adoption strategy and self-served digital onboarding; go-to-market playbooks with a shared value proposition. ### Principal Product Designer @ Dell Technologies Jan 2014 – Jan 2019 | Austin, Texas, United States Early in my Dell tenure, I led two transformation efforts during the Dell EMC integration, helping the newly merged company redefine how teams build and ship software internally and redesign omnichannel commerce digital experience for how people discover and buy technology solutions. Together, these initiatives supported Dell’s broader shift toward delivering end-to-end technology solutions, not just hardware. • Research & Build: Omnichannel commerce redesign plus AI/ML personalization, using intent inference and contextual calls to action across online and sales channels; modeled a $256.8M annual revenue opportunity. • Enable & Scale: Software development and delivery practices modernization from waterfall to agile including customer-centric practices with pair programming, Pivotal Cloud Foundry-driven micro-frontend architecture, hands-on lab enablement as an instructor for 240+ engineers and PMs. Results: BU-wide reliability, satisfaction, throughput, and security gains (incidents -14%, CSAT +11%, throughput +34% stories delivered, vulnerabilities -90%) ### Faculty & Subject Matter Expert in AI @ Georgetown University Jan 2025 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area As faculty and AI SME for Georgetown’s master’s programs in Artificial Intelligence Management and IT Management, I translate fast-moving AI into practical, real world utility through hands-on projects and evaluation thinking. I bring interdisciplinary expertise across technology, business, and the human sciences to help professionals build and govern AI that people can trust, adopt, and scale responsibly. • Research & Build: Business AI transformation playbook and workbook; Vibe-portfolioing — A business AI transformation simulation across value chain, spanning conversational AI, agentic AI, and emotionally intelligent AI product experiences. • Enable: Course design and teaching for AI User Experience and its curriculum; course teaching for Ethical AI; invited expert instruction video in AI Scenarios for Strategic Decision-making certificate course. ### Speaker, Author, Instructor on AI and Emerging Tech @ avrilwhsu.com Jan 2023 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area I build industry-facing AI thought leadership, coaching sessions, and workshops that help professionals move from curiosity or concern to practical adoption, and shape AI use to amplify their unique strengths in how they think, decide, and work. I ground rapid evolving AI in historical context, field research insights and real-world practice, surfacing nuance and tradeoffs so leaders and builders can replace misconceptions with decisions they can execute. • Research & Build: Field experiments on human–AI workflows and collaboration; synthesis of current AI/ML research into practical guidance; frameworks for evaluation, trust, and adoption. • Enable: Keynotes, panels, and conference talks; AI product design course and curriculum; team workshops and coaching for leaders and practitioners to build responsible AI, adoption, and human-centered outcomes; coaching and writing for individuals on self-differentiation and career development in the AI era. ### Advisory Board Member, Product Design & Innovation @ Rutgers University Jan 2021 – Jan 2024 Served as a trusted advisor providing strategic guidance to shape curriculum and align it with industry needs. I collaborated with faculty alongside other industry leaders from Salesforce, Meta, Bank of America, Netflix, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Intel. ### Advisory Board Member, Customer Experience @ University of Houston, C.T. Bauer College of Business Jan 2021 – Jan 2024 | Austin, Texas, United States In my role as an advisory board member for the executive program on customer experience, I focus on industry best practices and customer-centric strategies, with a specialization in fostering organizational partnerships to move ideas from inception to execution. This has strengthened the program’s ability to prepare executives to lead transformative customer experience initiatives in enterprises at scale. ### Senior Experience Strategist, Growth of Product @ Pixable (acquired by Singtel) Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Greater New York City Area Working directly with the co-founders and VP of product growth, I applied my expertise in customer data analysis to develop experience strategies for topic modeling and recommendation algorithms. My work focused on driving user acquisition and retention, supporting the company’s broader product growth and M&A strategy. This effort culminated in the product's successful acquisition by Singtel in 2012. ### Director, Product Design & Growth @ KFA, SARL Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Germany; Taiwan As a trusted partner to the company’s engineering co-founder, I led the design of a self-serve digital platform that brought their patented R&D innovations to the forefront for end customers. The platform enabled customers to configure, monitor, and manage usage, and integrate with their in-house systems and databases, reducing friction and expanding adoption. • Research & Build: Self-serve platform experience for patented innovations; Integration capabilities across Azure, SAP, Salesforce, and databases. • Enable: Simplified onboarding and adoption materials. ### Founding Team Member; Head of Branch Office @ Process Brand Evolution, AG Jan 2006 – Jan 2010 | Switzerland; Taiwan I grew from a founding team member and product designer to the head of a branch office at this Swiss consultancy company, overseeing the P&L. I led a global team partnering with C-suite leaders at B2B and B2C clients to translate Web 2.0 and early cloud capabilities into new products from concept to market, productizing applied research into high-potential use cases matched to emerging customer needs. This work helped clients modernize how they served customers and drove a 70% increase in branch consulting revenue. • Research & Build: 0-to-1 products across the value chain for home appliances, finance, biotech, and healthcare clients; prototypes to pilots launch. • Enable: • Enable: Brand and design thinking workshops; cross-functional facilitation to align stakeholders on strategy and priorities; go-to-market and sales enablement materials to support launch and adoption. ## Education ### Mini-masters in User Experience Design Rutgers University ### Master in MBA, Marketing Rutgers Business School ### Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Industrial Design Chang Gung University ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/avrilwhsu - Portfolio: http://www.avrilwhsu.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/avril JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/avril/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-13