An AI-powered email generation assistant tool designed for members of a technology consulting club
Role
UX Designer
Timeline
5 Months
Team
1 Project Manager
5 Software Analysts
1 UX Designer
Platforms
Figma
Procreate
React
Firebase
BACKGROUND
The Why
In today’s recruiting landscape, success comes from building genuine relationships with recruiters, understanding company values, and sending intentional outreach- not just submitting applications. Within our club, saw that a lot of our members were talented candidates that struggled to make these connections, spending hours on LinkedIn or sending generic emails that went unanswered. The issue was visibility. We needed an internal system to streamline recruiter discovery, personalize our member's outreach, and turn our applications into conversations.
RESEARCH
Competitive Analysis
I created a competitive analysis to position the Atlas Emailer as a potential software product, comparing it to tools our club members might otherwise use. I wanted to visualize before the platform was built, how to frame it as a fully realized product with unique value.
Essentially, the Atlas Emailer stands out because it combines features that competing platforms split apart. Unlike Simplify, it retrieves recruiter emails automatically and stores them in an internal database, reducing long-term costs. Unlike Apollo.io, it doesn’t require constant API calls or pay-per-search fees. It also goes beyond both tools by generating personalized, GPT-powered emails rather than just using basic templates. With these goals in mind, we want to design the Atlas Emailer to be more sustainable, cost-efficient, and personalized than existing alternatives.
As an internal consulting project for Atlas Digital, we studied our own members as the primary users. We interviewed 8 interns and software analysts, surveyed 20 members, and combined qualitative feedback with survey data to understand their internship outreach challenges.
To validate our observations, we drew on Drawing on Closing the Doors of Opportunity (Hora et al., 2022), we found our members faced similar barriers: limited internship availability, heavy course loads, and the need to work paid jobs. Many spent hours searching for recruiter contacts, reused generic email templates, and had no centralized place to store or share information-making outreach fragmented, repetitive, and discouraging.
Key Insights:
No efficient system to find and connect with recruiters
More than 75% reused generic templates, reducing personalization
Nearly all wanted a shared contact database to avoid duplicated work
Time and energy spent securing internships often outweighed the work of internship itself
RESEARCH
Understanding Users
SYNTHESIS
User Persona
Jane Doe
Club Member in Atlas Digital Consulting Club
Computer Science
Class of 2027
Jane is an ambitious student preparing for the internship cycle, balancing course load, extracurriculars, and applications. Despite her qualifications, she feels behind.
PAIN POINTS
Spent excessive time digging in LinkedIn or Slack threads to find recruiter contacts.
Lacks the confidence to write compelling or personalized outreach emails and defaults to using generic templates.
Frustrated by duplicated effort- realizes others in the club may have already contacted the same recruiter but there’s no way to know.
SYNTHESIS
Problem Statement
Atlas Digital members don’t have one place to connect with recruiters in a reliable way. Right now the process is scattered, and that makes it easy for talented students to get overlooked in the job market.
IDEATION
Low-Fidelity Storyboard
My low-fidelity storyboard mapped the full journey of a member using the recruiter outreach platform in the Atlas Digital portal, focusing on functionality and information hierarchy before visual polish.
It starts on the Atlas Digital site, where members access the tool via the homepage or an “Apply” section. They connect their email, add basic profile details, and choose industry keywords like product management, consulting, or software engineering, along with filters for programs, shared identity groups, and personal details. This surfaces recruiters with stronger connection potential.
Selecting a recruiter triggers GPT to generate a tailored email that blends recruiter info with the member’s profile for authentic, non-generic outreach. Members can edit the draft, attach a resume, and send it directly.
Future features include resume compatibility scoring and follow-up workflows to schedule coffee chats, ask about roles, or re-engage recruiters after applications.
IDEATION
Design System
IDEATION
Inspiration
When designing our recruiter outreach platform, we looked to established tools for interface and workflow inspiration to ensure our product felt intuitive.
Simplify’s dashboard influenced how we approached our member homepage. We admired how Simplify presents users with a clean, centralized layout and large, action-oriented cards for key tasks. In our platform, this translated into a streamlined dashboard where members can instantly choose between core actions- Coffee Chat, Opportunities, and Follow-Up- without hunting through menus.
QuillBot’s AI writing dashboard inspired our email generation interface. Its integration of writing tools, tone adjustments, and content purpose toggles directly informed how we built the recruiter profile view. Members can view a recruiter’s information and, within the same screen, customize outreach tone (formal, casual, concise) and purpose (introduction, follow-up, application) before sending- mirroring the experience we saw in QuillBot.
ITERATION
Testing
During our iteration phase, I met one of my mentors- a senior member in the UX Design program and also member of Atlas Digital with significantly more experience- to review the interface. She provided targeted feedback on design consistency, accessibility, and usability. Specifically, issues with spacing alignment, button contrast, and the rigidity of forcing users to choose from preset templates. Her guidance helped me refine the visual hierarchy, and improve accessibility through higher-contrast elements.
We prototyped the email creation interface in Figma and tested it with club members and our software engineering team. UX interviews and usability tests revealed three main issues:
Cognitive Overload – Too much recruiter and profile information crowded the screen, making editing harder. Especially the various color coding of red and blue made information confusing.
Unclear Workflow – Personalization, tone, and purpose controls felt scattered and confusing.
Poor Space Use – The large recruiter profile pushed the email body too far down, reducing focus.
The redesign simplified the layout, grouped controls logically, and prioritized the email body, making personalization faster and the interface easier to navigate.
ITERATION
Changes
These onboarding screens represent a core improvement we made after our midpoint feedback- placing personalization at the center of the outreach process. Instead of relying on a few static templates, we now begin by gathering detailed, relevant information about each member: their major, minor, fields of interest, and aspects of their personal identity they wish to highlight.
This approach helps to ensure that the emails generated are tailored to the individual’s background, goals, and shared connections with the recruiter. By understanding each member uniquely, the system can surface more relevant recruiter matches and craft messaging that feels authentic rather than mass-produced.
These following screens further strengthen our focus on personalization by capturing each member’s unique voice. Members introduce themselves in their own words. Then, they select a writing style that best matches their tone. This ensures that the AI-generated emails reflect not only their background and interests but also their authentic communication style, making their outreach feel natural and not scripted.
FINAL PRODUCT
Prototyping
This was my first major project that required extensive prototyping, and it quickly became a pivotal skill in bringing our vision to life. As we approached our final deliverables, the software engineers on our team were focused on backend integration and didn’t have the bandwidth to translate our UI into code before the presentation.
To ensure the experience was still presentable, I took the initiative to fully prototype the interface in Figma. In the process, I deepened my understanding of key interactive elements- such as radio button logic for user selections, hover states to create clear feedback on clickable elements, and even typing animations to simulate the dynamic feel of filling out information in real time.
On the top is the interaction panel for the text animation I developed to simulate a “typing” chatbot effect in the prototype. This setup uses a timed delay, property changes, and smart animate transitions to create the illusion of words appearing in real time, making the experience feel more dynamic and conversational. It was a key detail in bringing the interface to life during presentations.
FINAL PRODUCT
High Fidelity
Below is a final deliverable walkthrough that I created, demonstrating the full user flow of the application.
LOOKING FORWARD
Future Tasks
Filter Option – Add the ability to filter between each company in the spreadsheet.
Create Error Messages – Show clear error messages when users don’t select required options to continue.
Edit Initial Responses – Provide a compressed page containing all initial user information that can be easily edited.
Date Option – Include a timestamp in the spreadsheet to indicate when outreach was made.
User Testing – Conduct usability tests with members to validate new features and ensure smooth workflow.
Enhanced Security – Implement measures such as rate limiting to prevent misuse and protect recruiter data.
LOOKING FORWARD
Reflection
This being my first project with the club, I honestly learned so much more than I expected. From the start, I had to adapt my designs so they were intuitive for my team of junior analysts to use, which meant constant communication and making sure every decision made sense for them. I quickly realized how important iteration was- I went through over five variations, and each round of feedback made the final product stronger.
I also dove into prototyping more than ever before, especially since the engineers didn’t have time to build the UI. I taught myself how to create radio buttons, hover effects, and realistic typing animations, which brought the whole experience to life. It was a lot of trial and error, but I leaned on my mentors, my project manager, and a ton of tutorial videos to figure things out.
By the end, I was proud of how much I grew. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, learned new skills fast, and saw how much better a project can when taking in feedback and collaboration. Mostly, I am excited to see this software become more developed and utilized within my club in the future. It is always extremely gratifying to be able to see your work be put into actionable cause.