Stash

TL;DR

How might we capture the ritual of online shopping without the guilt?

With one-click checkout, stored payment info, and endless targeted ads, shopping has become frictionless—and for many, a little too easy.

In response, I designed a mobile experience that blends e-commerce and savings, turning familiar shopping flows into opportunities to save instead of spend.

01.

Research

I conducted user interviews with 5 self-identified online shopping addicts and discovered that for them, buyer's remorse hit the second they clicked Buy.

02.

Design

I designed a mobile experience that was half faux shopping feed and half savings app.

MARKET RESEARCH

I identified gaps in the market to determine where a new solution could stand out

I used ChatGPT to map out the major savings and budgeting categories, then refined them through a review of real products.

Two categories and one outlier stood out from my research:

Budget Trackers

e.g. Mint, Monarch

Track and visualize spending, but only after money is already gone.

Automated Savings Tools

e.g. Qapital, Acorns

Moves money automatically in the background. Effective for saving, but doesn't address impulse shopping.

Proactive Budgeting Tool

Notable Outlier: YNAB

Helps plan spending before it happens, but still doesn’t intervene at the point of purchase.

This led me to an initial hypothesis: the biggest opportunity to support reckless spenders is supporting them at the moment they feel the urge to shop.

USER RESEARCH

I set out to validate this hypothesis by interviewing five self-identified online shopping addicts

Insights

IDEATION

I began by outlining the must-haves, nice-to-haves, and won’t-haves to define the project scope

🛒 Focused on shopping-to-saving behavior rather than full expense management

This was informed by my prior research insights.

🏦 Prioritized savings goals

YNAB showed the value of saving toward something, while my interviews revealed that people also want skipped purchases to turn into real savings.

💡 Explored ideas

I considered letting users mark when "fake buys"actually became real purchases but saved it for later to keep the first release focused on the core experience.

How should users upload items into the app?

In an ideal scenario, users could simply paste product links from existing shopping platforms, and the app would automatically scrape details like the image, title, and price. However, web scraping across multiple e-commerce sites introduces reliability issues, maintenance costs, and potential legal challenges.

Chrome Extension

Chrome extension for scraping existing products.

Rejected: Unreliable across sites, desktop-only, and doesn’t match mobile shopping behavior.

AI-Generated Listings

Users enter a prompt for an item and GenAI produces a fake image and description based on the information provided.

Rejected: Users I interviewed wanted an experience as close to real shopping as possible, not "AI slop".

Editable GenAI Listing

Users upload a real product image through a listing form, and a multimodal LLM auto-fills the item name, price, and description.

Selected: Balances authenticity (users see a tangible product they selected) with efficiency, since the AI reduces the manual work of creating a listing.

What do you call a fake purchase?

"Calling them "Fake Buys" or "Saves" completely breaks the illusion of shopping!"

—User Insight

To avoid that friction, I used "Stash" for the action of "buying" an item. Test participants responded positively: the label of "Stash Now" made it clear they weren’t actually buying something, yet still felt playful and close enough to real shopping to keep them immersed.

FINAL DESIGNS

Reimagining the tournament registration and seating process

A Marketplace By You, For You

Because the goal was to mimic real shopping behavior, I modeled the flow after familiar mobile marketplaces. Unlike real apps, users can “buy” their own listings, so the homepage highlights wishlisted and self-listed items most likely to sell.

I added AI labels because users couldn’t distinguish what the system generated and what they'd written during testing. The tags encouraged them to edit details, making the fake-shopping flow feel more intentional.

Insights

The Insights page presents activity as motivating visuals—goals, breakdowns, and trends—kept intentionally lightweight in response to user feedback.

Savings Flow and Savings Jars

The Savings page gives a simple view of total balance amassed from Stashing and savings jars, a feature sparked by a user who wished saving felt more like filling a piggy bank.

IMPACT

I tested several flows to ensure they were intuitive and to determine whether the concept actually resonated with users

100% task success rate

Tested the listing and savings flows.

4/5 adoption likelihood

4 out of 5 participants said they weren’t interested in traditional budgeting or savings apps but would consider a fake-shopping experience.

STAKEHOLDER FEEDBACK

Thank you to my users!

"Stashing provides a similar sense of relief as real shopping."

—User Feedback

"Using the jar felt way more real than a regular budgeting app. I could actually see and interact with my progress, and that made saving feel more meaningful."

—User Feedback

"I didn't love having to list what I wanted to buy. I get what it’s trying to do, but it didn’t feel natural. Maybe if it worked right inside the shopping platform or browser, it would fit more with how I actually shop."

—User Feedback

LESSONS LEARNED

This project taught me that users don't want to be fixed, they want tools that work with their impulses

🧠

Turning shopping into saving worked because it mimicked existing behaviors

By leaning on recognizable patterns like browsing, adding to cart, and visual progress, I could make new habits feel instantly intuitive.

↪️

If I was doing this project again, I would have tested with people outside my target group

I focused heavily on self-identified shopping addicts. Testing early concepts with people who shop less impulsively might have revealed different use cases or motivators.