Tia - Designing an AI powered chat to find top candidates for high volume hiring

Sapia.ai helps enterprises hire smarter with AI. Our assessments evaluate candidates and generate reports for recruiters. Tia consolidates the candidate data, surfaces top candidates and answers recruiter questions, making hiring easier using Large Language Model (LLM)

My role

I designed end-to-end interaction and visual design of the product, from initial concept to MVP.

The machine learning team had an early prototype, and I refined and defined the full interaction model, visual design, and overall experience.

I have also worked closely with our marketing team to define visual language.

Opportunity

Tia helps recruiters surface top candidates faster and with greater confidence

Surfacing answers to questions like “Why is this candidate the best fit?”, improving their efficiency and understanding of their candidate pool.

Market research

Since most recruiters manage candidates in their ATS (Applicant Tracking System), we embedded Tia into our Chrome extension so they can ask questions while browsing candidates.

Research into how AI is being integrated across B2B products have surfaced a common pattern embedding AI natively within the platform, but that approach had limitation for us as a portion of our users review candidates outside of our platform - in external ATSes (Applicant Tracking System).

We already had a Chrome extension in place for interview scheduling. It made sense to integrate Tia directly into it, giving users access to AI assistance while browsing on their ATS.

Brainstorming

Expanding touch points users might need Tia for beyond identifying candidates: Discover, comparing and generate

Mapping out the full hiring journey, we have uncovered opportunities for Tia well beyond candidate search: from drafting offer letters to developing training plan based on their weaknesses.

Working with engineers, we prioritised tasks for MVP, set others aside for later releases based on feedback, and grouped them into 3 query categories:

Discover: Top candidates on the role

Comparing: Between multiple candidates

Generate: Decline and acceptance emails, interview questions or training plans based on candidate data

To prioritise a fast release, the team focused on adoption feedback and deprioritised other ideas in favour of lowest possible effort

Branding

The visual direction was to feel smart and professional while staying true to our brand colours pink and purple

Our marketing designer was responsible for the Tia logo, and I designed the visual UI for the Tia interface.

Drawing on my design expertise and consolidated team feedback, I ultimately landed on a lighter palette using these colours, as it felt cleaner and allowed more focus to the content.

Final design

Simple onboarding screens demonstrating capabilities

With a simple onboarding guide for first time users

Context is everything

When recruiters are viewing a job in their ATS, we incorporate that context into the chat and evaluate candidates based on the role they’re looking at, creating a more relevant and contextual experience.

Sufficient guidance to deliver value

A blank chat input can be confusing, so a prompt library guides users through the hiring process. I also proposed dynamic prompts tailored to the specific job being viewed - scoped out of MVP to revisit after user feedback.

Delightful waiting experiences

We surface Tia's reasoning in real time, keeping users informed and bringing transparency to how top candidates are evaluated.

Crafting responses in a digestible manner

The target users aren't tech-savvy and prioritise speed, so the interface is kept visually clean and responses easy to digest. Core AI tasks were mapped to cards, each with clear follow up actions to keep the workflow moving.

Candidate cards were designed around what talent teams actually need: scoring, email for quick outreach, and a tight 2–3 bullet summary of key highlights.

Measuring success

Explicit and implicit feedback were both monitored by the team

For our MVP phase, adoption is the key metric we want to ramp up.

Explicit feedback are collected through “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” in our responses

Implicit feedback were metrics such as:

  • Average duration and adoption of chat
  • Whether users were asking the same questions again
  • Interaction between the tasks cards designed

This project is currently in the pre launch phase, so its success metrics are not yet available.

Learnings and reflection

As AI products grow more complex, the designer-engineer relationship becomes critical.

Understanding the capabilities and constraints of AI informs how we design experiences that feel intuitive - meeting users where they are, and surfacing the right guidance at the right moment.

Furthermore, understanding what customers might ask are hard to test and assume as there is no linear flow in a non-deterministic chat. Feedback becomes essential as it can reveal how they would naturally talk to AI.