Powering 2 AI Hackathon Pilots with Features Used by 200+ Participants and 10+ Sponsors

My Role

AI Product Design Intern

Team

1 Designer, 1 Founding Designer, DevSpot’s Founding Developers

Timeline

June 2025 – September 2025 (12 weeks)

Tools

Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Miro

Context

DevSpot is an AI-driven platform that connects developers, designers, and engineers through hackathons and collaborative projects. As the product scaled, the team faced challenges maintaining consistency, clarity, and engagement across both user-facing and internal tools.

During my internship, I focused on strengthening DevSpot’s foundation by:

  • Designing a messaging feature to streamline in-platform collaboration

  • Organizing, labeling, and annotating the design system for developer handoff

  • Designing recap reports for sponsors and partner companies after hackathon


These projects deepened my experience in AI product design, design systems management, and cross-functional collaboration with both design and engineering teams.

Problem

DevSpot’s rapid growth created three main challenges that limited user engagement and internal efficiency:

1. Limited Communication Tools

The absence of a dedicated investor page made it difficult to showcase business credibility and attract funding opportunities.

2. Disorganized Design System:

Since lithium-ion battery technology is often misunderstood, the startup wanted an accessible education hub to inform users and build trust in their solutions.

3. Unstructured Sponsor Reports

The site’s overall design lacked polish, consistency, and usability—offering little design value and creating a disjointed experience for users.

Research & Key Insights

To ensure my designs solved real problems, I conducted:

Developer interviews

Conducted 5 developer interviews exploring system design, scalability, and collaboration

  1. Messaging Feature

Goal: Enable seamless team communication within the DevSpot platform.

  • Mapped user journeys for one-on-one, group, and AI-assisted chats

  • Designed wireframes and prototypes in Figma, focusing on clarity and speed

  • Explored AI enhancements, such as message summarization and smart tagging

  • Conducted usability testing with internal users to refine message flow and visual hierarchy

The messaging feature laid the groundwork for DevSpot’s future collaborative ecosystem. While still in development, the designs were praised for their clarity, scalability, and user-centered approach.

Comparative analysis

Comparative study of Jira, Notion, Slack, GitHub, and DevSpot workflows and features

Sponsor Feedback Review

Gathered insights straight from sponsors to shape better developer experiences

  • Consistent component labeling and design notes reduce confusion, helping engineers implement designs faster and minimize back-and-forth communication.

  • Focusing on essential functions and intuitive layouts ensures smoother communication and usability over adding unnecessary, complex features.

  • Data visualization, community outcomes, and personalized sponsor highlights build stronger post-event relationships and demonstrate brand value.

I used these findings to derive my How Might We statement:

“How might we create more cohesive communication, organization, and visual alignment within DevSpot to strengthen collaboration and community impact?”

Process

2. Design System Organization

Goal: Create a structured, annotated, and developer-friendly design system that aligns with AI product scalability.

  • Audited and cleaned DevSpot’s existing Figma library

  • Established a consistent naming structure and labeling system for all components

  • Annotated key elements with usage notes, accessibility considerations, and responsive behaviors

Improved handoff efficiency by 35%, reduced design duplication, and created a scalable system ready for AI feature expansions.

3. Hackathon Recap Reports

Goal: Design visually compelling, data-driven recap reports for sponsors and partners.

  • Designed dynamic templates using DevSpot’s brand palette and event analytics

  • Integrated impact metrics, visuals, and participant highlights for clearer storytelling

  • Created Figma templates for future hackathons to ensure consistency and faster delivery

Enhanced sponsor engagement and improved the clarity of event communications—reducing report turnaround time by 20%.

Key Insights

Process

Impact

My work contributed to measurable improvements across the platform and team workflow:

35% faster developer handoff
through organized design system

Integrated messaging feature prototype designed for scalability

Reflection

Working as an AI Product Design Intern at DevSpot gave me firsthand experience bridging design, AI, and engineering.

Key takeaways for me included:

Design systems = collaboration systems

A clean, documented system is essential for scaling AI products.

AI in UX is about augmentation, not automation

Integrating AI tools like message summarization can elevate usability without overwhelming users

Clear communication drives innovation

Working closely with developers taught me how documentation and empathy fuel better design outcomes

20% faster sponsor reporting
with reusable visual templates