Proquesto
1. Context
A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a buyer's formal request for vendors to submit detailed proposals. Responding often requires coordinating busy subject matter experts across teams, answering hundreds of repetitive questions, and turning scattered existing knowledge into a cohesive proposal. A slow, manual, and expensive process.
We designed an authoring experience turns a company's existing knowledge into a structured first draft. Proquesto identifies and maps the RFP's questions, pulls relevant answers from the knowledge base, and drafts the proposal. Writers can edit, refine, or add content themselves, or work through changes with an AI assistant, all while keeping the final proposal firmly in their hands.
2. The Problem
Turning a mountain of information into one cohesive response is no small task.
Proposal creation is fragmented and time-intensive. The information needed to answer an RFP is often scattered across departments, documents, past responses, and subject matter experts.
Proposal teams have to find the right information, determine what's relevant and reliable, make sure every requirement is addressed, and then shape it into a clear, cohesive proposal.
They spend their time searching, organizing, chasing down team members, and rewriting instead of focusing on the strategy that makes a proposal compelling.
3. My Role
Co-Designing the Foundation
I joined the project as a consulting co-designer, partnering closely with the lead developer to establish the initial UX direction. I designed the core workflow and foundational design patterns, working through the key interactions and structure needed to get the product off the ground. From there, the lead developer built on those foundations and scaled the designs as the product evolved.
4. Key Decisions
Bring scattered information together into living knowledge bases.
We gave proposal teams a single source of truth. Knowledge bases that could be structured by team, product, vertical, SKU, or any other meaningful grouping.
Writers could then connect the right knowledge bases to the right proposal, giving them a focused starting point without having to search through everything the company knows.
Traditional knowledge bases quickly become stale. Proquesto keeps them current by incorporating the latest information from completed proposals, so each proposal makes the next one easier and more accurate.
Break the Work Into Manageable Steps
RFP writing involves a lot of moving pieces, so we broke the process into a series of focused steps that authors could work through one at a time.
They start by connecting the relevant knowledge bases, confirming the requirements, then building an outline of what the proposal needs to cover, answering the RFP's questions, and finally generating and refining the draft proposal. This gave authors a clear path from a blank page to a first draft, with natural points along the way for review and decision-making along the way.
Keep the Author in the Driver’s Seat
We wanted authors to feel like they were writing the proposal, not simply reviewing something a system had created for them.
Every part of the draft could be edited, rearranged, rewritten, or removed, giving authors control over how the final proposal took shape. They could also add their own content wherever they felt something was missing or needed more context. The experience provided a starting point, but what happened next was entirely up to the author. This gave them the freedom to work in the way that felt most natural, while making sure the final proposal reflected their knowledge, judgment, and voice.
AI on the Author’s Terms
We designed AI assistance to be available wherever authors might need an extra hand, whether that meant refining a section, regenerating content, or working through a larger change.
Authors could make targeted edits directly within the proposal, or open Questie, a full-panel assistant that gave them a space to talk through the work and make broader changes. This made AI feel less like a separate tool and more like an available part of the writing process. Authors could use as much or as little assistance as they wanted, depending on what they were working on.
5. Impact
Higher-quality proposals
Proposal teams spend less time chasing down information and rewriting boilerplate, and more time shaping the strategy, narrative, and details that make a response compelling.
Respond to more opportunities
A strong first draft dramatically reduces the work required for each proposal, allowing the same team to pursue opportunities they otherwise wouldn't have the capacity for.
Lower the cost of every proposal
Expensive subject matter experts spend less time on answering routine questions and information gathering. They can stay focused on their actual jobs and step in only where their expertise matters in review and specialized input.
Organizational knowledge that compounds
Each completed proposal strengthens the knowledge available for the next one, so the system becomes more valuable as the organization uses it.
6. Design Examples
Below is a curated selection of screens.
Please keep in mind the full scope of work was much larger.
