What is Fetch?
Fetch is a mobile app that rewards users with points for specific actions like scanning receipts, shopping online, engaging with partner products, and other activities within the app. These points can be redeemed for gift cards from popular retailers.
What is "Snap" a receipt?
"Snapping" a receipt is the core action where users scan their receipts. Optical character recognition reads the receipt and determines the points a user earns.
This flow is the catalyst for almost every feature in the Fetch app including offers, boosts, personalization, etc.
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
2 Months (Q3-Q4 2023)
Team Formation
Design, Product, Engineering, Data Science
The Problem
The Fetch receipt camera was at the core of the product. As the user base grew, pain points grew louder:
Performance gaps: Slow capture and upload times.
Outdated UI: The camera's interaction patterns felt static and clunky compared to modern, sticky experiences.
Third-Party Dependency: The receipt scanning pipeline replied on a 3P called "MicroBlink". While sufficient, it acted as a "Black box" bottleneck that allowed little visibility into what signals were available to improve the UX.
We needed to rebuild the camera into a trustworthy and intuitive experience.
What the camera experience looked like
Problem Recap —
Current experience: Slow, unreliable and dependent on a third party "Black box".
Core flow: Almost every Fetch user uses this feature, yet the feature didn't feel exciting or sticky.
Project Goal
Redesign Fetch's core receipt snapping flow by replacing a third-party dependent camera technology with a sticky, intuitive experience.
Alignment
Team alignment. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Alignment Recap —
Design Phases
Discovery
By building our own receipt OCR, we gained transparency into the pipelines and flexibility to shape both inputs and outputs. We took this approach to keep breaking down the problem.
Through these channels, we found that our camera experience lacked transparency in information and the excitement and "stickiness" that other camera experiences displayed.
UX and Interaction Ideation
This project was unique in that solidifying the interaction design - which is traditionally saved until after the UI is established - was the initiator of what the UI could shape up to be. To be bold and create a truly intuitive experience, we needed to own the fluidity of the motions to be lead the design.
This resulted in us following a model of:
Early and often prototypes
Quick feedback syncs with stakeholders
Feasibility jams with engineers
The core of what we were aiming to do was find the right balance of autonomy and control. i.e. What can we remove from the user's cognitive load as they're going through this intricate flow of alignment, live camera feed, tap interactions, data input and output, etc. to ultimately get them to their receipt details screen.
One of the most distinctive explorations we continued to explore was a "Slide to submit" feature. Instead of the static button, users tapped down and slid to confirm - triggering subtle haptics, color shifts, and animations on screen.
The inspiration came from a core childhood memory I distinctly remember from visiting my grandparents in Japan each summer.
A festival game called Kingyo Sukui - which translates to goldfish scooping. In the game players use a delicate paper scooper to transfer goldfish from a shared tub into their own bowl.
At first, it's frustrating and fragile - but once you get the hang of the motion with some guidance from the game host, it becomes deeply satisfying. A feeling and motion you won't forget.
I wanted to replicate that same balance: a small moment of friction that, with clear instruction, becomes an addicting and rewarding interaction.
The slide-to-submit motion reinforced user intent while adding a unique, memorable moment of delight.
But this came with its own set of challenges.
Initially, we explored and released a couple of different ideas to a small cohort of users:
What we quickly realized, we were overly dependent on tooltips and copy to teach. More user tests and feedback sessions, revealed the constantly changing, non-static camera feed, disoriented users' focus and attention to be diverted from where we needed.
This failure forced us to rethink how we teach and guide users.
We moved away from the text instructions and introduced a more visual and animated approach to submitting the receipt. We also included a first time user intro animation to bring delight to the experience.
See the resemblance? :)
After experimenting with this iteration to a small cohort of users, we immediately knew this'll become the foundation for the final slide-to-submit interaction.
Hi-Fidelity Specs
Specified motion specs
This resulted in us following a model of:
Early and often prototypes
Quick feedback syncs with stakeholders
Feasibility jams with engineers
The core of what we were aiming to do was find the right balance of autonomy and control.
i.e. What can we remove from the user's cognitive load as they're going through this intricate flow of alignment, live camera feed, tap interactions, data input and output, etc. to ultimately get them to their receipt details screen.
Current Experience Breakdown/Audit. Fetch User & Partner POV.
Project Release
The new snap experience was launched as a cross-functional initiative between Product, Design, Engineering, and Data - not just as a visual redesign, but as a complete re-integration via an in-house OCR system.
Rapid iterations: Ideate, iterate, test, and re-iterate.
Cross-functional collaboration: Because the backend teams were working in parallel with the design, we had to stay closely aligned throughout the entire project for feasibility and timeline reasons.
Bringing more delight to Fetch: Millions of apps worldwide. We continued to make Fetch as delightful as possible.
By transforming what was once a fragile, background experience into a confident feature, we saw success across all metrics.
The camera became something that Fetch could proudly highlight.
Project Outcome
Individual performance
The rebuilt camera experience turned Fetch's most used feature from a behind-the-scenes utility tool into a proudly showcased experience - one that redefined why Fetch feels so rewarding.
96%
90%
+15%
Reflecting back…
What went well:
Fluid prototypes: Continually updating and showing stakeholders and users a prototype (rather than static screens) helped push this project efficiently.
Cross-functional partnership: Lockstep alignment with engineering, product, and data allowed us to push the boundaries on this experience.
What could've gone better:
Less reliance on copy: We were potentially too conservative with how we taught users. We quickly learned that showing is much better than telling.