Role: UX/UI Designer
Timeline: 10 weeks
Platform: Web
Tools: Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, Teams

ApplyReady

Making Resume Building Clear and Confidence-Boosting for Career-Changers

ApplyReady is an AI-powered resume builder designed to guide career-changers through resume creation with clarity, real-time feedback, and role-specific guidance. Reducing guesswork and building confidence at the moment of application.

Prototype

Figjam File

Problem Statment

People changing careers aren’t just struggling to format resumes, they’re also struggling to trust themselves.

From research and interviews, we found that most resume tools:

Focus only on document creation, not job-specific optimization
Provide generic, outdated advice
Offer little clarity around ATS systems
Leave users unsure if their resume is actually “good enough”

As a result, users spend 45+ minutes per application, constantly second-guessing their decisions.

Design challenge:
How might we reduce confusion, cognitive load, and self-doubt while helping users confidently submit ATS-ready resumes?

Possible Solution

ApplyReady guides users through resume creation with modular sections, real-time AI guidance, and ATS-aware feedback, turning a stressful task into a clear, repeatable workflow.

Key outcomes:

Faster resume creation
Role-specific guidance
Increased confidence at the moment of submission

Design Process (Goal- Directed Design)

Throughout the project, I led the visual design and established key UI principles to ensure a cohesive, user-centered experience. I also conducted 3 of the 6 user interviews during the research phase, helping shape key insights that informed the final design direction.

Research

Modeling

Requirements

Frameworks

Refinement

Literacy Review
Competitor Audit
In-person Interviews

Behavior Mapping
Synthesize Characteristics
Define Goals
Personas

Brainstorming
Context Scenario(s)
Requirements List

Wireframing
Visual Design

Usability Testing
Implementing Feedback

Research Phase

During the research phase, our team aimed to identify the primary pain points users experience when using resume-building platforms. To better understand users’ needs, goals, and challenges, we conducted:

What we expected: formatting would be the biggest pain point
What we learned instead: uncertainty and lack of guidance mattered more than layout

Design implication:

Users don’t want more choices. They want clear direction at the right moment.

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Competitive Audits

Compared 4 platforms

Literacy Review

Reviewd about 5 documents

15 Job Interview Tips, According to Top Designers.jpg

User Interviews

Interviewed 6 users

Key insight from the interviews

Resume advice is inconsistent and outdated
Users don’t understand ATS systems
Personalization matters more than templates
AI is welcomed, but only when transparent and helpful

Modeling Phase

During the modeling phase, my team and I synthesized our research findings to identify key behavior patterns and create a primary persona. By organizing interview data into behavior variables, we uncovered meaningful trends that directly informed our design decisions. These variables included:

Resume experience

Comfort with technology

Trust in resume tools

Time willingness

From this, we identified a primary persona who represented the majority of our users.

Persona

Jared Miller

32 years old
Assistant Manager at Walmart
Located in Chicago, Illinois
Bachelor of Arts in English
Writes visual novels in his spare time

Persona Narrative

Jared Miller is an Assistant Manager at Walmart with a degree in English. After struggling to find internships in his field, he took an entry-level role in retail and worked his way up. Though he enjoys writing and wants to pursue a career aligned with his degree, he lacks confidence in his resume-building skills. Jared tailors his resumes manually in Word but finds the formatting frustrating and feels unsure about his job descriptions. He avoids online resume builders due to trust issues and paywalls but actively searches for tips and would appreciate guidance on improving his job applications.

End Goals

Learn more about creating a competitive resume.
Efficiently format his resume using a simple tool.
Update their resume and download it in under 15 minutes.

Life Goal

In a secure job in his desired career field.
Confident in his resume building skills
A newspaper editor.

Requirements Phase

After defining our primary persona, Jared, the next step was to determine what the product must do to genuinely support him.

We conducted structured brainstorming sessions focused on a single question:

“If Jared opened this product tonight after work, what would he need in order to feel supported rather than overwhelmed?”

Generated Ideas

Guided resume flows
AI-assisted writing suggestions
ATS compatibility feedback
Modular resume sections
Role-specific content prompts
Resume asset storage

Context Scenario

To pressure-test our ideas, we created a real-world scenario:

Setting: Living room couch after a long shift
Trigger: Frustrated while applying for a creative writing role
Device: Personal laptop
Interruptions: Notifications and fatigue
Goal: Submit one strong application tonight

Jared doesn’t want to “explore.” He wants momentum.

This helped define core requirements such as:

Quick progress with visible feedback
Clear next steps
Minimal formatting decisions
Confidence at export

Framework Phase

Color and Typography

I selected blue as the primary color to communicate trust, professionalism, and stability, which its qualities essential for a career-focused product. Blue is commonly used in corporate and enterprise platforms because it reinforces credibility and reduces visual stress during task-heavy interactions.

From a UI standpoint, this aligns with a core principle:

Color should support function and emotional context, not compete with content.

Blue Green

HEX : #0096C7

RGB : 0 | 150 | 199

CMYK : 100 | 25 | 0 | 22

Typography was chosen with readability and hierarchy as the priority. Because users spend extended time editing and scanning content, I selected a clean sans-serif typeface that:

This reflects another key UI principle:

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Istok Web

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Geist

Body 1

Body 2

Typography should enhance comprehension, not draw attention to itself.

Maximizes legibility across screen sizes

Supports clear visual hierarchy

Reduces cognitive load in content-dense layouts

Anti-flash White

HEX : #F4F4F5

RGB : 244 | 244 | 245

CMYK : 0 | 0 | 0 | 4

What can I help with?

How do I improve my resume?

Lapis Lazuli

HEX : #00578F

RGB : 0 | 87 | 143

CMYK : 100 | 39 | 0 | 44

Meet our AI bot,

Jobbie

Crafting a standout resume can feel

overwhelming, but AI bot jobbie

makes it simple—just like filling in

the blanks. In fact, our AI bot goes

the extra mile and fills them in for

you.

Black

HEX : #000000

RGB : 0 | 0 | 0

CMYK : 0 | 0 | 0 | 100

Refinement Phase (final Design)

In this phase, we facilitated three structured usability testing sessions to validate our design decisions and uncover friction points within the workflow. The findings revealed clear patterns in user expectations, highlighting a need for:

Download

Wanted to be able to download automatically and not go into a different pag.

More Options

Wanted more template options that was ATS friendly and not just 4.

AI Feature

The AI feature easier to understand and not complex to understand.

This transformed resume building from a stressful task into a guided, repeatable system.

Reflection

What I Learned

Confidence is a UX problem, not just a content problem
AI is most effective when it supports, not replaces, user agency
Clear guidance beats unlimited customization

What I’d Explore Next

Job-specific resume scoring
Stronger transparency around AI suggestions
Accessibility improvements for neurodivergent users