De-stressing Gift Giving
Project Overview
Design five screens of a gift exchange mobile app.
In the spirit of the holiday season, Designlab posed a challenge for its students and alumni: design three to five screens of a gift exchange app. For this project I worked together with fellow graduates Chris, Denise, and Tiffany over the course of three weeks to propose a solution.
Timeline
November 2021 - December 2021
The Problem

Might Have Known

Given that the parameters of this project were left open, my team and I conducted research to further investigate what problems the user is currently facing. After completing a survey and series of user interviews, we realized that users struggle to give meaningful gifts, especially when reliant on their receiver's wishlist.
The Challenge

Not Close but Personal

The goal of this project was to personalize the existing gift exchange experience while maintaining an element of surprise.
My Role

Fit for a King

I collaborated with Chris Xenophontos, Denise Macalino, and Tiffany Li as a UX designer on this challenge over the course of three weeks starting in November 2021 and finishing in December 2021.
The Solution

Answer Key

Since we could only design up to five screens, we focused on showcasing the features we felt that best addressed the problems of our users, with the main features listed below.

    Onboarding Quiz

    Before setting up a gift exchange group, users first undergo a quiz as part of onboarding. This information is later saved to a user's profile, can be viewed by their gift giver, and used to generate gift recommendations.
    A mobile mockup.

    Personalized Profile

    Gift givers can learn more about their assigned receiver via a profile. Details are based off answers to the quiz completed during onboarding. In case this is not enough, givers may ask questions directly to the receiver without sacrificing their anonymity.
    A mobile mockup.

    Browse Based on Profile

    Looking for gifts can be completed within the app itself. Users can specifically search for items or receive recommendations informed by receivers' profiles, with the option to add items to a virtual shopping list.
    A mobile mockup.
    Mobile Screens

    All Present and Accounted For

    High-fidelity wireframes were designed in Figma and eventually configured into mockups using Adobe Photoshop. This finally gave us the ability to send over our favorite five screens for voting.
    Five mobile mockups above the text "Wrapped".
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    Personal Musings
    Reflections

    Looking Back

    ∙ Due to the constraints of this project, we were only able to show a maximum of five screens. It was difficult to showcase the app's capabilities in what we considered a small amount of screens, but it ended up helping us as a team prioritize proposed features during brainstorming.
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    ∙ The primary reason why the four of us decided to participate in this challenge was simply to spend some time together during the winter holiday season. Each of us brought our unique perspectives and talents while reminding me of the unspoken privilege working together on a wonderful team. Placing third in the overall competition was just the bow on top!

    Additional illustrations by Alex Muravev, Olga, and Tatyana from the Noun Project.
    Primary illustrations by absurd.design
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