carte.
One place for everything you want from the small brands you love, with a budget that keeps you honest.
- Role
- Product Designer, supervised by Professor Sana Maqsood (UX Design Lead, Amazon)
- Timeline
- 10 days
- Type
- UX Design Studio project
- Tools
- Figma, Figma Slides, Claude (coded prototype)
A camera roll full of jackets
Instagram already knows what you'll like. That part works. You tap the ad, screenshot the jacket and promise yourself you'll come back to it.
You don't. The screenshot slides under a concert video, a parking sign and a meme you meant to send. By the end of the month there's a pile of them, and none of them has a link or a price.
One person I interviewed put it plainly:
“I click on the link and screenshot the item, but usually forget about it. I just end up with a pile of screenshots.”
P1 · age 21 · shops from Instagram adsSaving things isn't the hard part. Everything after saving is.
So where exactly does it fall apart?
Three ways a wishlist falls apart
Screenshots pile up with no link or price attached, so items are forgotten.
Every brand has its own checkout, so there's no single view of what's been spent.
Pinterest is cluttered, and pins rarely lead back to the product.
How might we help people keep everything they want in one place, shop within a budget, and share what they wish for?
People already have tools for each piece. I wanted to know why none of them hold it together.
Every tool solves one piece
how people save, shop and track products across brands today.
three people who love shopping through Pinterest, Instagram and online stores.
| Keeps the link | Works across brands | Tracks spending | Easy to share | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| partly | yes | no | yes | |
| Screenshots | no | yes | no | partly |
| Brand wishlists | yes | no | no | partly |
| carte (the goal) | yes | yes | yes | yes |
I labeled the carte row "the goal": it's what the app set out to do, not something research found.
“Since Instagram knows my algorithm, they usually know what items to recommend. I click on the link and screenshot the item, but usually forget about it.”
P1 · age 21 · Instagram ads“When I'm on Pinterest or Amazon, I realized so many products are sponsored items. I end up clicking on the link and purchasing it, but I never know how much I've spent. I have so many similar items at home.”
P2 · age 24 · Pinterest or Amazon“I work in the fashion industry, so I usually shop at independent brands. My list of brands keep growing and it's really hard to keep track of them, especially when I need to look up an item at a photo shoot.”
P3 · age 28 · independent brands| Theme | How many | What it means | What carte does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forgets saved items | 3 of 3 | People forget the items they screenshot. | Every saved item goes into one feed with its photo, price and link. |
| Overspends across brands | 2 of 3 | People can't see how much they spend. | my carte shows the budget and total spending in one place. |
| Too many brands to track | 2 of 3 | People shop at too many brands to keep track of them all. | All brands live on one Home page, each with a Shop link. |
People lack one place that connects saving, buying and budgeting.
Three themes, three jobs for one app.
Three paths, one Home
Everything starts on Home, the saved-items feed. From there:
- Add an item: tap the add bar → screenshot, link or photo → AI scan → item found, save.
- Plan & buy: tap a photo → my carte → mark bought → weekly receipt. Buy opens the brand's own site.
- Review spending: tap receipts → all receipts → one receipt → swipe between weeks.
Then the flows needed screens.
Prices beat pretty
I sketched each part of the flow more than one way before choosing.
| Idea | Status |
|---|---|
| Image-only grid | explored |
| Grid with price + Shop | chosen |
| Social sign-in | chosen |
| Login form | chosen |
| Cart list + total | chosen |
| Receipt card | chosen |
Prices and links on every item. The image-only grid was lovely to look at, but it was a mood board, and research had already said mood boards are where products go missing.
Then I put the low-fi prototype in front of people.
Testers found the repeats
I tested the low-fi prototype with four people. Here's what they told me, and how the design changed because of it.
| What testers said | What I changed |
|---|---|
| “The cart page repeats everything on Home.” | Rebuilt it as my carte: budget, totals and rollover. |
| “Cart buttons on every photo feels visually cluttered.” | Tap a photo to add it, tap again to remove it. |
| “It's hard to tell which items are selected.” | A translucent red overlay marks items in my carte. |
| “Receipt thumbnails are too complicated to view.” | Shorter receipts that show the total and rollover. |
The cart page took the biggest hit. It turned out to be Home with a total at the bottom, so it became something Home couldn't be: a place to plan spending.
Here's what came out the other side.
Screenshot in, receipt out
Home: Tap a photo to add it to my carte.
Add item: AI reads a screenshot and finds the link.
In my carte: A red overlay shows what's selected.
my carte: Budget, totals and rollover together.
Receipts: Weekly receipts with rollover.
Receipt: Swipe through past weeks.
Paste a link, upload a screenshot or take a photo. carte reads it, finds the brand, product and product page, and saves it with the price. There's an option to get a heads-up when the price drops.
Selecting is just tapping. my carte shows the budget next to what's in the cart, and each item can be marked bought, opened on the brand's site or removed.
Every week ends in a receipt: what was bought, the total, and how it compared to the budget. Swipe to go back a week. It's the one receipt people might actually want to read.
- Red #FF3D1B, Yellow #FFB65D, a glass variation at 50% opacity, Faded Black #232323, Gray #858585
- SF Pro Black 60 for headlines, SF Pro Semibold 32, SF Pro Light 18 and 13, SF Pro Regular 11
- The logo is the app's idea in one mark: a glass cart with the wordmark riding in it. App icons in light and dark mode.
A free app still has to pay for itself somehow.
Free for shoppers, worth it for brands
Proposed model. Not tested.
Shopper taps Buy → carte sends a customer → the small brand pays a commission. carte stays free for shoppers.
- 1.
Affiliate links: Brands pay a commission when someone buys through carte. Free for shoppers, and it fits how they already use the app.
- 2.
Premium subscription, $6.99/month: Unlimited lists, screenshot auto-import, price-drop alerts and custom receipts.
- 3.
Brand partnerships: Labeled offers on items people already saved.
- 4.
Printed receipts: A physical yearly receipt to keep or give as a gift.
One version shipped as a prototype. Here's where it goes next.
What I'd carry forward
Shareable wishlists where friends can quietly claim a gift. Sharing made it into the problem statement and missed the first version; it's first in line for the next one.
Price-drop alerts and order detection from email.
A shareable carte, wrapped every December.
Testing early. It showed the cart repeated Home, so it became a budget space.
More voices. Interview more people of all ages, and design for accessibility from day one.
Balance. Business goals and user needs can pull apart.
The screenshots still happen. They just have somewhere to go now.
