CarMax ChatGPT App

In 2025, CarMax made a big bet on AI to assist customers in shopping for cars. Our only solution was in-house, not where shoppers actually spend time. Since more and more people use ChatGPT for all kinds of things, I ran user research to test car shopping with it. 1. Everybody was surprised by how much they loved it. 2. It was incomplete. So the very day that OpenAI announced the ChatGPT Apps platform, I identified the opportunity and moved fast: beat Carvana to the AI-native market.

Immediately after the announcement, I patched together an app mock from screenshots of ChatGPT and Spotify's app. Then I mocked a fake OpenAI co-branded page showing Carvana as a partner to show that our competitor might beat us to market. I sent both assets up the chain (along with a clarification that it wasn't a real partnership).

A few weeks later, I was added to a team to sprint on building the app. I started by reading OpenAI's design guidelines. It confirmed the importance of the app feeling like a native part of ChatGPT. Then, using components from CarMax's official Figma file, I refined the design and created both MVP and final versions, allowing engineers to ship incrementally.

I positioned CarMax to be the first car shopping app in ChatGPT by moving fast on mocks and specs.