Designing Digital Services That Actually Work

The Context

Client: Digital Transformation Agency (DTA)

Service: UX and Design Recruitment

Sector: Federal Government – Digital Services and Experience

The Challenge

The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) was tasked with overhauling Digital Marketplace 2 (DMP2), the national platform that helps Australian government departments connect with digital suppliers. It’s a high-stakes piece of infrastructure with big implications for procurement, access, and service delivery.

To do the job properly, they needed a UX Designer who could handle the complexity: enterprise-level systems, layered user needs, and government-grade constraints. Someone who could think in prototypes and policy, map the moving parts, and work with people across multiple teams, fast.

No pressure.

Our Response

We kicked things off with a deep dive into the role. Not just a list of skills, but clarity on the platform’s goals, delivery environment, and how design maturity was progressing inside the DTA. This gave us the context to shape a recruitment strategy built for outcomes, not just speed.

Here’s what that looked like:

• Sourcing across multiple channels: SEEK, LinkedIn Recruiter, design-specific communities, and our own passive candidate network

• 197 candidates considered: 167 inbound, 30 proactively sourced

• 14 shortlisted: Each with experience in complex digital platforms and inclusive service design

All shortlisted candidates went through:

• UX-focused interviews

• Portfolio reviews and design challenge walkthroughs

• Reference checks with senior public sector or enterprise stakeholders

• Qualification and certification checks

We also managed the full recruitment process end-to-end:

• Coordinating interviews and preparing briefing packs for DTA panel members

• Presenting detailed candidate summaries with capability and fit assessments

• Supporting offer negotiations, onboarding, and post-placement follow-up

The Outcome

The designer we placed hit the ground running, immediately contributing to:

• Mapping architecture to align design with real-world procurement workflows

• Leading co-design workshops with internal teams and external suppliers

• Developing interactive prototypes for usability and accessibility testing

• Building a reusable component library to speed up future design work

• Collaborating on the MVP roadmap with product and delivery leads

Their work helped shape a more user-friendly, accessible and scalable version of DMP2, a key step forward in the DTA’s mission to improve digital government services.

Why Resolve

We’re not here to just fill a role. This project showed what happens when recruitment is grounded in delivery context, design thinking, and a clear understanding of government environments.

The right person, in the right seat, at the right time. That’s what Resolve does.