Sapia.ai is a B2B software that empowers high volume companies to hire more efficiently using AI. I joined the team as the only designer, tasked to redesign their candidate management platform - Talent Hub - for improved scalability, UX and visual design
Success: Reduced clicks in the main user journey by 75%
Product Designer
Product manager
Product lead
Customer Success
Engineers
Research and auditing
UX and UI
The old candidate management platform was a legacy platform developed entirely by engineers, with no design refresh or UX consideration for over 6 years. The interface lacked alignment with brand guidelines, and many of the components were not built with scalability or consistency in mind.
As a result, the overall experience felt outdated, cluttered, and difficult to maintain.
Since we had difficulties getting time and access to hiring managers, I have held informal interview sessions with three members of the Customer Success and product lead, who regularly engage with customers. These conversations focused on:
A design audit was also done to identifying major UX issues.
Analytics tools weren’t implemented in the old platform, so I wasn’t able to gather quantitative data to support my research.
I have looked at ATS platforms that hiring managers use on a daily basis, such as Workday, SuccessFactors, Ashby and Greenhouse to identify common patterns and designs.
A glimpse into what the old platform looked like
When a role opens, they will receive a candidate insight report, generated from the Sapia.ai assessment that the candidate completed during their application.
This is the current journey they go through (Click to expand):
This flow involves multiple clicks and tabs, creating unnecessary friction, especially when candidates have two assessments, doubling the effort required.
There were no clear guidelines for how components should interact. User experience was often sacrificed whenever new filters or features were added on the page
The platform was used by both Customer Success and hiring managers, but admin features were still visible to hiring managers, causing clutter and confusion.
design a more scalable, self-serve platform that supports future growth, allowing room for future initiatives without sacrificing user experience and consuming significant engineering effort
Together with our product manager, we have defined key metrics that served as a foundation for my design decisions:
1. Establish scalable interaction patterns, making it easier to introduce new features and pages with reduced design and development time
2. Optimise the experience to access candidate insight reports by reducing the number of clicks it takes to reach it
I started exploring on how we can improve the user experience of the Insights viewing experience, here were some iterations:
Option 1
Display the insights report as an overlay panel that slides from the right
✅ Option 2
Displays insight reports on a new page with a left panel to browse candidates and take actions
Ultimately, the second option was chosen considering they might be sharing the report as link to other of their colleagues to review. The first option would make this difficult in an engineering standpoint.
After discussions with the engineering team, Ant design components was decided to be the foundation of our new design.
We aimed to be WCAG AA compliant. I have audited and identified some accessibility issues of the components, and have made changes accordingly.
Original components
Colour contrast: 1.39:1
WCAG AA: Fail
✅ After
Colour contrast: 3.36:1
WCAG AA: Pass
For example, this input border over here couldn't pass contrast of 3:1 contrast ratio on a white background. Thus have adjusted it to a deeper grey required to meet those standards
New page for candidate's insights report. Users can now navigate other candidates through the sidebar on the left, and a panel on the bottom to change their status and progress when necessary.
Filters drawer for scalable development
The final designs reduced clicks by up to 75%* for our customers, significantly boosting productivity their daily hiring workflow.
*Evaluated based on navigating an insights report and progressing them to the next stage
Moreover, after release, we added new configuration pages and dashboards, which integrated seamlessly thanks to the consistent component patterns and page structures established during the redesign.
Post-release, analytic tools were implemented, and actively tracked to ensure customer satisfaction. New features were added with usage in mind, and minor changes were introduced based on usage statistics.
