Gift Planner
Never Miss a Moment
Role: UX Researcher and Designer
Duration: 3 Weeks
Project Status: In Development
Project Overview
Gift Planner is a mobile gifting assistant app that helps users plan, personalize, and schedule thoughtful gifts through reminders, curated suggestions, AI-generated ideas, and calendar integration. The concept stemmed from a common challenge: busy people love giving meaningful gifts but don’t always have the time or tools to plan them well. The solution was designed to make gift-giving more thoughtful, organized, and stress-free.
Scope of Work
We aimed to simplify gifting for working professionals and caregivers by combining personalization with automation. The goal was to remove friction in the gifting process, reduce decision fatigue, and create an intuitive path to meaningful gifts.
Framework:
We followed the Double Diamond framework to guide the Gift Planner project. This approach helped us stay user-focused, moving from broad research to refined solutions through four key phases:
We began with interviews and surveys to understand how people manage gift-giving. We uncovered common frustrations, like forgetting dates, decision fatigue, and lack of personalization.
Discover & Define:
Goal of Research
To understand how people plan and manage gift-giving, identify common challenges and behaviors, and uncover opportunities to create a solution that helps users give thoughtful gifts without stress or last-minute pressure.
Refined Challenge Statement
Many people want to give meaningful, personalized gifts but struggle with time, decision fatigue, and remembering important dates. They need a simple, reliable way to plan ahead and ensure every special moment is celebrated on time, without added stress.
How might we make gifting easier and more meaningful for busy users by helping them plan ahead and discover personalized gift ideas effortlessly?
Competitive & Comparator Analysis
To better understand the landscape of gifting and planning tools, we analyzed both direct competitors and indirect comparators. This helped us identify common features, user expectations, and gaps in the market. By combining Feature Inventory, Element Analysis, and a SWOT Analysis, we gained strategic insights that shaped our product direction.
Competitive Analysis
We reviewed gifting and planning apps to understand common features and UI patterns.
Key takeaways: Many lacked personalization, had cluttered layouts, and didn’t support quick, stress-free planning.
Comparator Analysis
We used SWOT to assess tools like calendar and productivity apps.
Key takeaways: These excelled at scheduling and reminders but lacked emotional connection and gifting-specific features. This showed a clear opportunity for a more thoughtful, user-centered solution.
Persona
To bring our research to life, we created two user personas grounded in insights from eight user interviews. These personas reflect the emotional and practical needs of people who want to give meaningful gifts but face different challenges with time, planning, and decision-making.
By capturing their motivations, behaviors, and frustrations, these personas helped us stay focused on real user needs throughout the design process and guided key decisions in building a user-centered gifting experience.
Journey Map
To better understand the full gifting experience, we mapped the end-to-end journey for each persona. This helped us identify where stress, confusion, and friction occur, especially during the consideration and decision-making phases.
Our journey maps revealed how different users struggle with gifting in unique ways. Emily feels overwhelmed by time constraints, while David delays decisions due to procrastination. The app supports both by offering timely reminders, curated suggestions, and simplified scheduling.
This mapping exercise outlines the key stages of the experience, from realizing the need for a gift to the moment it is received. It highlights emotional triggers, pain points, and opportunities to create a smoother and more confident gifting process.
Revised Problem Statement
Busy individuals often forget important dates, struggle to choose meaningful gifts, and feel overwhelmed by the process. Gifting becomes rushed, impersonal, or missed entirely. They need a seamless solution that helps them organize, personalize, and schedule gifts with ease so that every special occasion is celebrated on time and without stress.
Unique Value Proposition
Research Takeaways
Reminders
Build a flexible reminder system that sends timely alerts for upcoming events, reducing mental load and helping users avoid last-minute gifting.
Personalization
Incorporate AI-driven suggestions and recipient profiles that make it easy to find thoughtful gifts based on individual interests, past gifts, and relationship context.
Wishlist & Organization
Provide users with a centralized space to save, categorize, and revisit gift ideas, supporting easier decision-making and reducing the stress of shopping.
Gift Scheduling
Give users the ability to plan and schedule gifts ahead of time, helping them stay organized and ensure every occasion is remembered and celebrated.
Design & Delivery
Sketching & Concepting
To quickly explore ideas and visualize solutions, we used sketching exercises like Crazy 8s and rapid wireframes. This helped us generate a range of concepts for key features such as the calendar, recipient profiles, and gift suggestions. It was a fast, collaborative way to align on direction before moving into digital wireframes.
Mid-fidelity Screens
We created mid-fidelity wireframes to map out the core user flows, including adding recipients, browsing suggestions, and scheduling gifts. These screens allowed us to focus on layout, hierarchy, and navigation without getting distracted by visuals, helping us gather early feedback on usability and flow.
High-Fidelity Prototype
Building on user feedback and insights from our mid-fidelity testing, we created high-fidelity screens to bring the app’s visual identity and user experience to life. This phase focused on refining layout, enhancing clarity, and ensuring accessibility across key touchpoints. The final designs prioritized a warm, intuitive interface that balances both emotional and practical aspects of gifting. Key screens included the recipient dashboard, gift suggestions page, calendar sync with notifications, and gift detail customization. Each iteration aimed to optimize user flow, simplify navigation, and deliver a seamless, stress-free gifting experience.
Usability Testing
We conducted two rounds of usability testing to improve and validate our design. The first round focused on mid-fidelity wireframes and uncovered usability issues in key flows like adding a recipient, browsing suggestions, and scheduling a gift. These insights guided updates to layout and navigation.
The second round tested high-fidelity designs, focusing on visual clarity and interaction improvements. Task completion rates increased, error rates dropped, and users completed tasks faster. Feedback also showed a boost in satisfaction, especially around ease of use and design clarity.
Mid-fidelity
High-Fidelity
A mobile app that:
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Integrates with calendars.
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Offers AI-driven gift suggestions.
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Allows users to set reminders and auto-send gifts.
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Saves recipient preferences and past gifts.
Prototype
Building on user feedback and insights from our mid-fidelity testing, we created high-fidelity screens to bring the app’s visual identity and user experience to life. This phase focused on refining layout, enhancing clarity, and ensuring accessibility across key touchpoints. The final designs prioritized a warm, intuitive interface that balances both emotional and practical aspects of gifting. Key screens included the recipient dashboard, gift suggestions page, calendar sync with notifications, and gift detail customization. Each iteration aimed to optimize user flow, simplify navigation, and deliver a seamless, stress-free gifting experience.
Recommendations and Next Steps
Building on user feedback and insights from our mid-fidelity testing, we created high-fidelity screens to bring the app’s visual identity and user experience to life. This phase focused on refining layout, enhancing clarity, and ensuring accessibility across key touchpoints. The final designs prioritized a warm, intuitive interface that balances both emotional and practical aspects of gifting. Key screens included the recipient dashboard, gift suggestions page, calendar sync with notifications, and gift detail customization. Each iteration aimed to optimize user flow, simplify navigation, and deliver a seamless, stress-free gifting experience.