Mission:

Gifted is an app that allows people to create and view wishlists. When it comes time to give or receive, it removes the stress of finding the perfect gift and in turn reduces unwanted items resulting in waste. This makes for an all-around more enjoyable experience for your friends and loved ones.

THE PROBLEM

Buying gifts can be a stressful and frustrating act for many. People are often hard to buy for when you don’t know what they already have or what they truly want. When you can’t find the perfect gift it often results in buying out of desperation which can cause waste or additional time and resources spent by the recipient exchanging an unwanted gift for something more useful.

USER RESEARCH

I performed user research via a survey and interviews in order to understand the users behaviors, needs and motivations when it comes to the act of giving and receiving.

Since this is a universal issue that affects all demographics, I started with the survey of a broad group of participants. I was looking for patterns or repeated issues within a defined demographic that I could perhaps target while still maintaining the overall usefulness to all demographics.

Survey responses focused on two main issues: first, people have a hard time coming up with good gift ideas and/or something the recipient would actually enjoy or find usable and second, people generally do not receive gifts they want and/or enjoy. This results in frustration and stress while partaking in an act that should be enjoyable.

Target Audience

The overall response was a bit too broad for me so based on the responses that were more specific, my target audience ended up being parents with minor children at home. When identifying the pain points, I found that parents with children had more focused dilemmas than any of the other participants. Those issues were:

• People constantly asking them what their child wants for a specific holiday or event.

• The child receiving a gift that the parent isn’t comfortable with or doesn’t want in the house.

• The child constantly changing their mind/interests leaving the parent out of the loop in what they want.

• When their kids are invited to an event that involves gifts, they have no idea what to buy for someone else’s child based on all of the above.

Onboarding

When signing up for the app the primary user is given the opportunity to add a spouse or significant other who, along with the primary account holder, can be made an admin of the family wishlists.
The user can also add their child(ren) as secondary users who can update their individual wishlists on their personal devices. The primary user will be provided control settings to ensure age appropriate content is distributed accordingly to the secondary users.
Once the family has been set up, the primary user(s) are ready to add/invite friends and family to join in the sharing of wishlists.
To set up additional admins or secondary users on their separate devices, they would download the app and scan the unique barcode provided on the primary users device to link. This identifies the additional account holders on each device and their linked account is set up and ready to use.

Add item to your wishlist

The user can add an item to the cart by tapping the search icon and doing a manual search or by tapping the + icon and scanning a barcode in order to pull up the item. Once the desired item is located/identified, it can be added to a wishlist.

Approve non-admin cart

When your non-admin user adds an item to their wishlist, a notification is sent to the primary user(s) prompting them to approve or deny the added item. This ensures that the non-admin isn’t gifted an item the primary user(s) aren’t comfortable with them receiving.
If the primary user approves an item, it is immediately placed in the non-admins wishlist and is available to be viewed by the members connected to the family account.

Create group

For ease of use the user can assemble groups to organize your friends and family.
Creating subset groups allows for quicker and simpler ways to make wishlists for specific events such as kids birthday party’s or anniversaries. The list updates in real time to invitees to those specific events.

create event

Creating events reduces the hassle of gift giving for invitees to specific events such as birthday parties for children, graduations, etc. An invite is sent out to the recipient showing the date and location of the event and any additional information. It also attaches an optional event specific wishlist much like a registry.
The invitees are given real time notifications on which gifts have been purchased and receive push notifications before the event as a reminder.

Purchase gift

When purchasing a gift for someone else, the user would either go to the recipients home page (if the gift is for a child, the user would find them through their parents page) and view their wishlist directly. Or, the user would tap on a push notification they received which would link them directly to that specific recipient or event.

Once in the recipients wishlist, the user has the ability to filter by price/category. They would then select the gift they want to purchase, add the gift to the cart and then check out.

The user would then be prompted to choose to either send the gift directly to the recipient, or to themselves.