Carta

Product design

back end development
USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
ux audit
front end development
branding
mood boards
visual design
usability testing
personas
user flows
low-fi prototyping
information architecture

Carta (formerly eShares, Inc.) is a Palo Alto-based fintech company that specializes in capitalization table management and valuation software. We began working with Carta in March of 2019 and have been involved with various projects across multiple lines of business within the organization. Working with product managers, other product designers, design technologists, and engineers, we helped to define user flows, application requirements, and to create detailed, interactive prototypes for various business units.

We worked with Carta during a pivotal period for the company as it experienced unprecedented growth and the release of numerous application feature rollouts and enhancements.

My role in this project

  • Conducted a competitive review of similar services available such as WeightWatchers®, MyFitnessPal® and Noom®
  • Developed an overall user flow depicting service onboarding, food logging and integration with 3rd party services
  • Designed and built an extensive set of high-fidelity prototypes using AxureRP
  • Created a detailed property map that presented technology requirements alonside user interactions within the application
  • Completed a full branding exercise including mood boards, logo concepts and associated collateral
  • Designed various app screens and user flows using Sketch
  • Liaised with app developers throughout MVP process
Mobile app visual design samples
Unlike other weight loss apps, Fitmethod aims to simplify the often laborious process of finding and logging food.

In three simple interactions, a food can be entered into the user's food diary. User behavior is rewarded with achievements and educational content around nutrition. is some text inside of a div block.
Navigation and flow samples
The "My day" dashboard provides users with an overview of their current food diary with macronutrient and exercise activity visualizations.
Visual identity mood boards
As part of the rebranding exercise, I developed initial logo concepts paired with mood boards to demonstrate the corresponding design languages.
High-fidelity prototyping
Using AxureRP, I developed an extensive set of high-fidelity mobile prototypes that simulated key tasks like onboarding, logging food and entering physical activity.
User journey mapping
I developed a hybrid user journey / technology diagram that presented user movement through the app alongside key technology decision points. This was developed in parallel with business modelling.
Competitive review
As part of my competitive review, I diagramed one of the key differentiators for Fitmethod - simplified food logging. In this diagram, the number of overall interactions are compared between MyFitnesspal (a key competitor) and Fitmethod for logging a simple food like a banana, and a more complex food like a sandwich.

Our role in this project

  • Current state user flow analysis to identify opportunities for improvement and consolidation.
  • High fidelity prototyping for fund administration onboarding and preparation of test bed for user testing.
  • Advocated for new components to be added to an established design system with the goal of being more approachable and easy to use for Carta customers.
  • High fidelity prototyping for capitalization table management data integrity/health checks.
  • Liaised with product managers, engineers and product design team members throughout various engagements
  • Attended daily stand-ups and product design team co-labs to ideate and improve upon UI design and patterns used within the Carta app

While we came into this engagement with decades of fintech experience having worked with many banks and insurance carriers, cap table management and valuation were areas that were fairly new to us. It has been a true pleasure being embedded within a team of such unbelievably talented product designers.

We worked with distributed teams in Seattle, San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and Rio de Janeiro daily on various product, UI and UX deliverables.

Varied tool set
The bulk of our prototyping work was conducted using Axure RP, Figma and Framer X, with occasional UI design deliverables with Sketch and Adobe XD.

Design systems
This engagement gave us the opportunity to work with a well-established design system developed for the Carta app, but also the chance to challenge some of these components and propose new ones.

View additional assets from this engagement

View more work samples