The idea of Wishstash came from a personal pain point: not being able to find good products easily. Often times I would be browsing Pinterest, only to discover dead links, discontinued products, or images with no product at all. For me, it was frustrating to search endlessly for quality products that were aesthetically pleasing. In-person shopping was even worse, as stores have limited inventories and are often overpriced compared to what you find online.
Ultimately the idea boiled down to an app that uses an algorithm to find products you would love: similar to how Pinterest's algorithm would find a pin that fits your interests. The difference is that Wishstash would be purely product-driven and not just for inspiration.

The next step was researching the marketplace for existing solutions and gathering design and user-flow inspiration from proven business models. I struggled to find similar apps in the marketplace other than "Wish". Wish had a similar idea but the selection and quality of products seemed rather poor. This led me to realize that the best approach may be a user-curated experience where users submit content and products they love- similar to certain subreddits and Pinterest. The overall user experience of Wish also felt rather spammy to me, as you are immediately brought to a page with tons of cheap products you may or may not have any interest in. This pushed me to consider creating an onboarding experience or integration with an existing social networks to gather data on a user's existing interests.
I also considered the format of the app. How would users find products they like? Would it be a window-shopping experience like Pinterest or Amazon, where the user could scroll through hundreds of products? Or would it be more like a Tinder experience, where the user would get matched with one product at a time and swipe right or left? I also played with the idea of making the app social. Perhaps you could see a feed of products your friends were interested in? This would hopefully help the user find products they would like themselves, or give them ideas for what to buy their friend for their upcoming birthday or Christmas party.
Finally I took a look at what needs the user would have. A few key items took priority when product-hunting:

• Product name
• Price
• Pictures
• User ratings + reviews
• Active purchase link
• Available sizes
• Colors
• Product specs/description
• Related products
• Brand

Once the user goals were established, I set out wireframing and creating user-flows on paper. I then designed the logo and chose typography and colors. A few different color schemes were tried. Originally I chose an orange and black theme but those colors did not really compliment the product identity as well as green and charcoal with neuteral colors.
Next I created a design library, interplaying organic and non-organic shapes. I decided tot use modular shapes for products and organic shapes for social elements. Modular shapes allowed the user to see more of the product while organic shapes gave a more human feel to the app.
Once the designs were completed I also gathered feedback from family, friends, and other designers to iterate on the concept and improve the app.