Gift App
This is an iOS app that enables you to browse gift ideas, manage the ideas and put them into to-dos. The ultimate guide to find perfect gift for anyone and everyone on your list.
It doesn't like any usual gift applications, it's community-driven. You'll find unique, creative gifts from savvy users who research and review them. With advices and recommendations you can save them into your list and the notification tool will help to remind you to place order before the special date is coming.
The Challenge
To create a mobile app that will help to ease the process of finding gifts for others, and make sure the UX is seamless while the UI is modern, sleek and easy to navigate.
Initial Problem Assumptions
Holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, people are tend to prepare gifts on these special days. Choosing the right gift is tedious and takes long time. With the special date approacing, it'll become more and more hurried and stressed to find the perfect gifts.
- It's time consuming for window shopping or even browsing online for things friends/family would like.
- Gift choices varied from daily necessities in Amazon, Jet, Walmart, to a neat Kickstarter project or one of the web’s cool stuff aggregators like Adafruit or expensive MoMa design store. There's currently not a single places to collect picks from various retailers.
User Interviews
However I still want to have some solid data to to get further understanding of how people find suitable gift for others, so I did some quick interviews with potential users. I then noted down their behavior pattern, frustrations, pain points and goals.
Interview 1: with Miranda
About Miranda
Miranda is a mom of 2 kids, and a freelance photographer.
She is known among her friends as "considerate Miranda", and she tries hard to maintain that reputation.
Behavioral Considerations
- Doesn't have too much time to spare while taking care of her two children, and her freelance work.
- It's easier for Miranda to access phone in between her busy work.
- She sometimes use her phone or desktop applications to edit and post her photogrpahy or videos.
Frustrations and Needs
- Doesn't know how to find a perfect gift when she cannot devote a good chunk of time to do research.
- Doesn't have time to chat with others to get recommendations in real life, she wants a group people out there where they can share their gift idea searching experience.
- She also wants to share her gift idea searching experience as she's very confident that every gift she gave out is suitable and satisfying.
Pain Point
- Because of work and taking care of kids, she cannot check her phone too often. Typing keywords to search is time-consuming.
- She often time sees someone posted a nice gift online, and she'll leave a comment asking if the post author can share the product information. You can t guarantee the post author will answer the question, or at least answer it on time.
Interview 2: with Vincent
About Vincent
Vincent is a data analyst, considers himself as a bookworm.
he is in a serious relationship but because of his job relocation, the long-term relationship becomes a long-distance relationship.
Behavioral Considerations
- He uses his phone frequently, part of the reason is because he wants to check in with his girlfriend.
- Doesn't have lots of friends to hangout with. Other than his girlfriend, his life mostly filled with work and book.
- He treates anniversaries, holidays, birthdays, and special occasion very seriously, especially when the relationship is long-distance now.
Frustrations and Needs
- Book doesn't teach you how to pick the best gift, actual experience does.
- Asked a few female friends for gift ideas, but their preferences are so different that don't know which one should he listen to.
- In the past, his gifts were safe options. He wants to find something more unique, and more special, not like average gifts to surprise his girlfriend.
Pain Point
- No one he knows ever give recommendations fit for his use case. Guys will suggest to buy flowers and chocolate, while girls are telling him to get jewelry in style. Doesn't know where he can get more guidance, after all, after all these years he's running out of gift options from his friends' recommendations list.
- He also wants to know if there's a way to categorize all the recommendations so if his girl friend approve one gift, he can continue shopping under that category.
Interview 3: with Katie
About Katie
Katie is an associate architect, currently living in her studio alone.
In the past few years, quite a few of her friends are moving in and out of apartments because of rent increase. Yet everytime, when someone moves into a new home, Katie starts to look for housewarming gifts.
Behavioral Considerations
- She's a heavy mobile phone user, has multiple apps installed. Browsing youtube for videos, instagrams for friends' recent posts, sometimes search through new recipes for cooking.
- Loves browsing apps' feeds, and she also posts her life either to youtube or instagram or facebook.
- She especially loves browsing for creative desk accessries or cute home decorations.
Frustrations and Needs
- Katie really wants a platform where it doesn't feel like pushing users to add something in the cart, she just wants to get some inspiration.
- Not very often that buyers will upload the picture of the actual product, you'll never know if it'll look exactly the same as the well-photoshopped description picture or crudely made.
Pain Point
- Katie goes to different sites to collect gift ideas, it would be amazing and more efficient if she only needs to go to one.
A General Research Result From the Market
Nowadays there are some gift apps helping people finding gifts based on categories, prices, target individuals, tags, etc. However, using these app, either as a checklist reminder where you can bookmark items, or works as a platform listing out aggregators for you to purchase those items. The approches has their advantages, somehow it still takes time for users to manually looking for gift from one end. With that being said, sometimes the results are not always desireable. To break this dilemma, I redesigned a gift app idea by introducing “community” concept into it.
The Product Concept
Gift ideas sharing + question-and-answer platform.
I came up with this idea while I was having a hard time searching gift for my cousin. As a teenager, she didn’t like popular stuff -- CDs or games is not an option, ipod is out, didn’t like books -- I just wish if there’s a way I can reach to people who had experience dealing with same thing. I would love to hear their suggestions, If only I can put up a place where people can share product and recommend gift to others!
User Flow Ver.1
It takes three main steps to complete the whole journey:
- Choose either to share a product or to ask for a specific gift recommendation;
- send out the review or the question;
- wait for feedback. While the first two steps require active action from the users, the last one serve more like a passive interaction.
User Flow Ver.2
After implementing user testing and questionaire, I tweaked the User Flow version 1 and make it easier to navigate and more intuitive for users. In version 1, I tried to balance between share posts on product and ask for gift recommendation, however, in reality users tend to focus more on exploring gift options. During the user testing, participants are fallen into two main patterns. A seeks for gift ideas, while B loves sharing newlest and coolest items they found and also enjoying exploring what others post. In addition, most participants prefer search for inspirations by themself. Waiting for others’ to reply to a help would be a big plus, but at the mean time, users are more likely to perform quick search. Thus search should be a quick and obvious action.
The user flow now changes to:
- Explore to see what others are up to.
- Search inspirations for gifts, ask for help when no satisfied searched results.
- Add new posts to share product with others.
Information Architecture
Who is This APP For?
Anyone searching for something for a hard-to-please gift receiver can really appreciate what the app has to offer. The gift receiver aside, users looking for a way to get organized about giving presents can also find much use out of the features offered on the Gifts website. Simply login and create personal lists or add family and friend profiles to manage upcoming gift purchases. Reminders can also be set so users can stay on top of upcoming birthdays, anniversaries and other events that should never be forgotten.
The App Features
- Allows users to set up a personal wish list so family and friends can see exactly what the user wants to receive
- Provides a family and friend entry list that allows users to keep a profile of loved ones that they need to buy for
- Reminder settings that allow users to list important dates, from anniversaries to birthdays or other occasions
- Wish list request option that allows users to send a request for a wish list from a friend or family member
- Unique category listings that go beyond the standard gender, age and occasion categories
- Recently viewed gift listing that helps users find items they may have forgotten to add to an order or wish list
Wireframe Ver.1
Visual Design Ver.1
