What if your grocery store receipt looked like this?

If you’ve ever looked at your receipt after a trip to a grocery or big box store, you know that small items can add up. The grand total can deliver a big shock to your budget!

One designer’s idea redesigning the humble grocery store receipt may point to a way for shoppers to understand more about how they spend money — and what they buy.

This re-imagined grocery receipt delivers data insights

Susie Lu, a senior data visualization engineer at Netflix, came up with the receipt concept when thinking about her own spending habits.

Posting on Twitter, Lu said: “Early prototypes of reviziting (sic) the receipt, one piece of a larger question I want explore: how can viz be integrated into everyday experiences?”

Lu says her project is larger than a redesign of the humble receipt.

“I was compelled to think of ways that data visualization could be used to redesign everyday experiences,” she tells Fast Company. “Of the use cases I had brainstormed, the receipt was the idea I was most excited to play with first.”

Lu’s design has three components:

• A numeral percentage which shows you how much of the bill a purchase represents
• A bubble chart to show your spending in various categories
• Finally, a bar chart for each item showing how relatively large of a purchase it was

“I found it [most] useful to understand by category how I spent my money,” Lu says, according to Fast Company. “I would be interested in seeing this over multiple grocery trips to see how the trend changed week over week.”

In lieu of having a graphical receipt like this, one thing consumers can do is look to spend less now. Use these tips to save money at the grocery store.

Would you find a receipt that looked like this useful? Let us know in the comments below, or on Facebook or Twitter!