DesignTrax

DesignTrax is an innovative applicant tracking and hiring platform for desktops designed to simplify and enhance the process of managing and evaluating top design talent from a large pool of job applications. By leveraging artificial intelligence and a user-friendly interface, DesignTrax reduces time-to-hire, streamlines the hiring process, and empowers companies to make informed hiring decisions efficiently. This project was conducted as part of the Protothon 2023, a UX Hackathon by DubsTech and Design Buddies. I worked on a two-person team with a fellow UX designer.

My role:

UX Design
UX Writing
Prototyping
Presenting

Tools:

Figma
ChatGPT by OpenAI

Timeline:

One weekend

(up to 12 hours/day)

View Prototype

Discovery 🔍

Getting Started with AI

For Protothon 2023, we had the following prompt: “Your task is to design an applicant tracking and hiring platform that makes it easier to manage and evaluate top talent from a sea of job applications, reducing time-to-hire and improving the candidate experience.”

Using this prompt, my co-designer and I created the following “How might we” statement:

How might we help companies effectively find qualified candidates out of hundreds of applicants?

Due to the small team and the limited timeframe, we used ChatGPT by OpenAI to get a starting point. This AI tool provided us with the following suggestions for design features to include in our platform:

Intuitive Application Management
Candidate Database and Search
Collaborative Hiring Workflow
Assessment and Evaluation Tools
Enhanced Candidate Experience
Analytics and Reporting

Because our weekend-long event did not allow us the time to do user research, we took these insights from ChatGPT and inferred the main challenges for recruiters.

Understanding the Common Challenges of Recruiters

Pain Points

Distinguishing between truly skilled UX Designers and those with limited experience or inadequate skillsets.
Coordinating schedules and gathering feedback can be challenging, especially when hiring for specialized roles.
Operating in a competitive industry where UX talent is in high demand requires staying updated on the latest trends to evaluate top candidates effectively.

With these pain points, we created the following user stories so that we could have a clear list of needs to address in our prototype.

User Stories

As a user, I want to quickly filter through a large applicant pool so that I can reduce time-to-hire.
As a user, I want to analyze an applicant’s portfolio so that I can understand their design process.
As a user, I want to follow up with a potential candidate so that I can estimate their compatibility with my company.

Ideation 💡

Learning how Recruiters Schedule Interviews

As a team, we created a preliminary user flow chart to demonstrate how recruiters will complete the main tasks of sorting through applicants and deciding who would be selected to move on to the next step of interviewing.

Making AI Part of the Solution

After realizing how much quicker ChatGPT made the discovery phase, my co-designer and I decided to include AI tools into the design of the final product so that recruiters could sort through the list of candidates more efficiently.

Design 💻

Putting Ideas to Paper

Using the user flow and the problem statement, we created low-fidelity wireframes of the candidate selection process. As I was thinking about these designs I prioritized making the process simple and intuitive.

Candidate Profile

Delivery 🎁

Recommended Top Five Applicants

Using AI, DesignTrax filters through the applicant pool to select the most qualified applicants for the role. The AI feature will use keyword tracking across all submitted application materials. The criteria are based on the job description, qualifications, and “nice to haves” listed in the job posting.

Easy Access to Portfolio Highlights

DesignTrax will create a profile of each applicant based on their application. Within the profile, there will be highlights of the applicant’s portfolio based on the AI’s keyword tracking feature.

Pre-written Emails for Interview Invitations

When a decision is made regarding an applicant, companies can send emails to the applicant that notifies them of their status. This pre-written email is automatically sent when an application is marked “interview requested” or “archived”.

Reflection 🤔

Here is the top lesson that I learned throughout the process:

Address All of the User’s Pain Points

One piece of feedback that we received from the judges was that the solution only addresses the management aspect of hiring, but not the evaluation. While we knew that we would not have the capacity to design solutions for all recruiting needs, we later realized that we would need to include features that assisted with the evaluation of a candidate’s previous work and qualifications for a current role. Because designing for the evaluation process would be impossible without research data, working with UX researchers would need to be a first step followed by more brainstorming sessions to ideate how DesignTrax could become even more beneficial to recruiters in the design industry.

Next Steps 📝

Conduct user research (ideally user interviews) to speak directly with recruiters and learn about their daily work process, how they evaluate a candidate, and what their main pain points are with their current platforms.
Conduct user testing to get first impressions of the prototype and determine how easily navigable it is for recruiters.
Analyze user testing data and iterate design solutions with the wider team to address any pain points that were brought up during the testing sessions.