Trace
UXL Wander Design-a-thon 2025
Timeline: 36 hours
Mar 2024
🏆 Best User Research
Members: Sasha Takoo, Jess Wu
User Research
Ideation
User Flows
Prototyping
Presentation Demo
UX/UI Design
UX Research
Product Design
Figma
Figjam
Adobe Photoshop
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
When creativity is questioned…
As AI-generated art becomes increasingly sophisticated, digital artists face a growing crisis of authenticity. Including insights from Reddit discussions, many creatives find their work mistakenly flagged as AI-generated, while AI art is often passed off as original.
SECONDARY RESEARCH
RESEARCH QUESTION
Rebuilding trust in digital art
In an era where AI blurs the lines of artistic authorship, we asked:
IDEATION
Rethinking verification
To bridge the trust gap, we explored features that could document an artist’s creative process. We began with a brainstorming session using sticky notes, where we listed every possible feature that could help verify artistic authenticity. I then took these ideas and categorized them onto a journey map, visualizing how artists might interact with a verification tool at different stages of their workflow. This helped us identify key pain points and prioritize essential features.
BRAINSTORM & JOURNEY MAP
INSPIRATION
As a graphic designer myself, I drew inspiration from tools I use daily. Photoshop’s History tool was a major influence, as well as Blender's Scene Collection tool. It allows artists to step through past actions, making it easier to track changes. I also looked at screen recording software, which could be the tool to passively capture creative processes without requiring manual input.
These tools led me to envision a system that automatically tracks artistic actions, offering verification without forcing artists to change their workflow. My goal was to create a non-intrusive solution. One that gives artists full control over what they share while still providing transparent proof of their work.
ITERATION
Balancing transparency and artist control
I worked on the user flows, mapping out the artist’s journey from starting a new project to exporting a verified piece. Early versions of these flows highlighted gaps in user control.
USER FLOWS (V1 & V2)
For verification, the original idea was to have a simple verification badge, but this lacked depth in proving authenticity and didn't address varying artist preferences. The system felt too rigid, requiring screen recordings that some artists found intrusive. In terms of tracking the artist’s process, both the action tracker and the screen recording was mandatory to verify their work as well
REFINED FINAL USER FLOW
I then refined the flow, and realized the main issue here is to know whether AI tools were used or not. If that’s the case then only action tracker is mandatory. In this flow, I introduced optional screen recording and a tiered transparency system, ensuring that artists could verify their work in a way that felt comfortable and authentic to them, and can record content if they want to show specifically how the tools and to what extent the tools were used rather than an arbitrary blue checkmark “verification badge”. I felt this approach allowed artists to verify their work in a way that aligned with their comfort level.
Instead of forcing full transparency, I prioritized flexibility. Artists could choose whether to capture their entire screen, only their actions, or a mix of both. This ensured the system could adapt to different artistic needs while maintaining the integrity of the verification process.
PROTOTYPING
Aiming for seamless integration
I was in charge of designing the creator flow, while my fellow designer, Jess, focused on the audience flow. The creator flow had to be seamless and always accessible, ensuring that artists could check their verification status without disrupting their workflow.
MAIN DASHBOARD
The Trace main dashboard gives creators a centralized hub to monitor and manage their entire creation process in real time. On the left hand side, users can view which creative software is currently active, including tools like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Blender, with real-time tracking indicators. The Action Tracker actively logs cursor movements, clicks, keystrokes, and history events, with a detailed timestamped action log visible on the right-hand side.
OS BAR INTEGRATION
Pulling inspiration from Microsoft's OneDrive status, Trace stays as an icon in the desktop OS bar, allowing artists to monitor its status in real time. Different states show different icons in the journey.
DROP DOWN MENU
When screen recording is enabled, not only does the Trace icon change, a red border appears around the tab that it is recording to provide clear visual feedback. At any point during the creation process, the user can click the icon at the top to open a dropdown menu, where they have the option to pause or stop the recording, mute their microphone, mark sections in the recording for future timestamps, and adjust audio settings. They can also access Trace’s main dashboard directly from this menu.
INTRODUCING…
Trace
LESSONS LEARNED
Designing for real world use
Importance of user flows
Exploring edge cases revealed that a simple verification badge was too subjective, leading us to develop the 3-tier transparency system.
Stop trying to solve everything
We initially focused too much on screen recording but realized the true value was in action tracking, which became the core of our solution.
When in doubt, ask for help
UXL provided mentorship sessions, where insights from designers at NVIDIA and TELUS helped us refine our concept and address real-world feasibility concerns.
