Gift Mate is a smart gift assistant that makes you an effective giver; keeping you on track of important events and generating only the most relevant gift suggestions that are fitting and meaningful to the one you are celebrating.

Roles

UX/UI Designer
user research, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, branding

Technology

Figma

Overview

Concept project for Google UX Design Course
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Users find themselves stressed and uninspired when it comes to gift giving; they want to be able to quickly and efficiently find gifts that are memorable. I wanted to grasp what it means to find the “right” gift and design a product that helps givers come up with gift suggestions and ideas that would help them express their affections effectively. Because meaningful giving wasn't limited to physical items, I utilized love languages and recipient interests to achieve gift suggestions that resonate for each recipient.

What are Love Languages?

Love languages are the way in which individuals experience and interpret love through 5 different expressions. The following are the 5 love languages.

Words of Affirmation

Receiving Gifts

Acts of Service

Quality Time

Physical Touch

For more detail on love languages, visit the official site at 5lovelanguages.com.

Grasping the Problem

User interviews and surveys were conducted with participants ranging from ages 20s to 70s, with various occupations, races and gender.

3 Pain Points

1. People struggled with knowing what to gift a person (especially if the person "has everything")

2. People had trouble remembering events early enough to plan ahead

3. Staying on budget

Design Principles

What makes a "good" gift?

1. Thoughtfulness: Defined as when someone puts effort into doing something for you or if they remembered details about you and show that they were listening and being attentive towards you
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2. Sacrificial: When someone gives up something of value
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3. Heartfelt: It does not have to be expensive or be a physical item, it can be as simple as a letter or a card, as long as it is sincerely felt from the heart

Hear from the Users

Justine Richmond

Occupation
High School
Teacher

Age
38

Location
Jersey City
NJ

Family
Married

Pain Points

Trouble remembering Events
Difficulty planning ahead

Needs

Continual reminders
Chronological list of events

Kristal Cho
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Occupation
Registered
Nurse

Age
30

Location
Astoria
NY

Family
Single

Pain Points

Finding the right gift
Gift search takes time
Staying on Budget

Needs

Customized Gift Suggestions
Gift history
Budget chart
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Finding the Solution

From listening to these responses, it seemed that the following features would be most useful to this app:

Design Requirements

1. For those who have trouble knowing what to gift a person
a. Personalized gift suggestions
b. A way to remember a recipient's interests
c. Consider love languages to make giving more meaningful where showing affection is not limited to giving physical items
d. Gift history log

2. For those who have trouble remembering events
a. A way to create reminders and set up notification

3. Staying in budget
a. Gift giving budget screen

Ideating

The Competitive Audit

I performed a competitive audit of 6 apps which included both direct and indirect competitors. I compared the different value propositions, initial impressions, user flows and the effectiveness of the visual design of each app.

Observations

1. I noticed a trend that many of these apps connected to and relied on Amazon for gift suggestions. There wasn’t a variety of stores to select from.
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2. Love language is not considered in any of these apps. Gift giving is mostly limited to giving a person physical items.

Crazy 8s

Additional features that came out of this exercise:

1. A button that takes both interests and love language to generate gift ideas
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2. A section where users can submit and share creative ideas how they've celebrated people

01

Home Screen

Kristal opens the app and sees the home screen with a list of important dates for her friends and family. She clicks on the card that says "Adrian's Birthday" to see if she can find a gift for him.

02

Recipient Details

Kristal is taken to Adrian's profile screen where she can input details about him such as interests and love languages to provide Gift Mate information for searching relevant gifts.

03

Gift Suggestions

After Kristal adds Adrian's information she clicks on the button that says "Click to Find Gift." She is taken to the Gift Suggestion screen where gift ideas are listed according to Adrian's interests and love languages. Kristal can favorite gifts that she likes or go on to purchasing the gift by clicking on a link that leads to the shop that sells the product.

Adjusting the Design

Results of the usability study

Some users did not understand the plus function so I added a few onboarding screens to guide users in creating the new recipient.

Users overlooked the gift suggestion button so I made sure to make that button stand out by giving it a different shape and allowing it to be in its own section. Once the user inputs either the recipient's interest or love language, the button displays an animation suggesting that Gift Mate is in the process of finding a gift which makes it more visible. Because the shape of the button is unconventional the text inside the button lets users know that they should click on it.

During the usability study, users also felt there was too much scrolling on the recipient profiles. I removed the note taking section because it had a similar function as the interest section (both had the purpose of recording a recipient's interest).

Users did not want to scroll through many birthday years and I learned that it is not optimal to use calendars for dates that are far behind. I used an input picker instead.

Users did not know that they were allowed to add more than one interest to this prompt below. In the new iteration I added a short explanation that users can add as many interests as they like.

Design Systems

Color Palette

Colors were chosen to be bright, upbeat and positive to evoke celebration, fun and excitement. The sage green is modest and balances the vibrant, warm colors.

#7aada9

Primary

#f3d34a

Secondary

#fff4f4

Tertiary

#f37748

Accent

Type Scale

I chose Quicksand for its friendly, fun vibe.

Quicksand 35px

Letter Spacing 0.25px

Quicksand 24px

Quicksand 20px

Letter Spacing 0.15px

Subtitle

Quicksand 16px

Letter Spacing 0.15px

Body 1

Quicksand 16px Regular

Letter Spacing 0.15px

Body 2

Quicksand 14px

Letter Spacing 0.1px

Final Work

On Boarding
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By clicking on the plus sign, we go straight into onboaring where each screen will guide you to create your new recipient.

Home Screen
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The home screen lists events in chronological order unless specified by other filters. The top section will always display the upcoming event.

The bottom navigation has links to the gift center, budget screen, favorite gifts and an "add new recipient" button

Recipient Profile & Gift Suggestions
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Each recipient’s profile will have the ability to add new events related to the person, love languages, the person’s interests, and their gift history.

Gift suggestion button navigates to the right most screen.

Top half of recipient profile

Bottom half of recipient profile

Gift Suggestions

Love Language Selection
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Ability to add love languages as a way for the app to generate gifts that are meaningful in addition to the person's interests.

Notifications
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Users will be able to create custom notifications for
each event.

Gift History
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Users can keep track of gifts previously given.

Budget
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Users can set total gift budget for the year. Donut chart would be an easy way to visually see how much was spent.

Gift Center
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The gift center will have links to gift ideas by categories. It will allow users to access the "Idea center" where people can post creative ways they’ve celebrated others.