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Overview of the Problem: How Might We... Help people find the best presents to give their friends and loved ones?
My Initial Premise: People generally struggle to generate gift ideas for their friends and loved ones.
What I learnt: People don't struggle with generating ideas, they struggle with generating ideas for gifts that are meaningful and personalised.
Based on research, people in Britain spend an average of £630 a year on gifts for their friends and family. Yet a significant proportion of people struggle with generating ideas on presents to get for their friends and loved ones.
Need
What is essential for the first version of the application?
Behaviours
How do the research participants decide which presents to buy?
Other
How do the research participants feel about existing products for generating ideas about presents to buy?
This study will enable the first version of the web app “Suggest A Present” to be built in a way that concisely addresses pain points of buying a present.
This study aims to understand how people currently buy presents, the top 3 aims are:
• How participants think of ideas on what presents to buy
• If they have struggled to buy presents in the past and how they resolved it
• What factors play a role in buying a present
This study is at the concept stage and it would help determine what features will be most useful for the first version of the application and possibly multiple more versions in the future.
What kind of criteria do participants need to meet?
They should ideally be millennials who like to buy presents for their friends.
Where and how do we find participants?
Friend groups and friends of friends- Young working professionals living in London.
Hey I’m currently running a study for a side project for my design portfolio and wanted to reach out to see if you have 30 mins for a conversation/interview about it? The study is about how people buy presents for their loved ones, friends, colleagues and so on. So I'll be asking questions on the presents you’ve bought in the past and your thought process.Hope that is okay. If you’re fine with this, can I set up a call this week? (Ofcourse, if you’re not fine with any of this or you’re busy, I’ll totally understand too, so please feel free to decline).
1. Do you usually buy presents for your friends or loved ones? [This is an ice-breaker question that should set the scene. The recruitment process should establish that they do but it sets the scene for the next set of questions]
2. On what occasion do you usually buy presents?
[This is to understand if there are other occasions apart from the common ones]
3. When was the last time you bought a present?
4. Have you ever struggled with buying a present
[This is a follow up from the last question. E.g. the last time you bought a present for person x, did you struggle?]
5. Tell me about the last time you struggled to buy a present [This leads from the last question and gets at the heart of where they struggled through a story]
6. Are there times where it is easy to buy a present?[Asking the opposite question to the previous to tease out the differences]
Based on data collected, people tend to struggle with buying presents for their family or loved ones. Specifically people tend to struggle with generating ideas for buying presents and gifting items with a high degree of accuracy.
The aim of this research was to understand the behaviours and thought processes of people as they attempt to buy presents for their family, loved ones and friends. In addition, the study was conducted in order to find the pain points people generally feel when buying presents.
• 4 out of 5 people struggle to buy presents for people or their loved ones
• Most people struggle because they want their gift to be meaningful
• People tend not to ask recipients for suggestions as the recipients suggestion may be out of budget
• Proffer solutions/ideas with a way of making the gift personalised
• Provide ideas on gifts that are impactful or useful
• Create a questionnaire to profile the gift recipient
Sticky notes arranged according to participant.
Sticky notes rearranged according to themes
More granular themes are added plus an "other" category.
Using the themes from the affinity diagram to sort into an empathy map
Hand drawn mockup showing the homepage of the website
Hand drawn mockup of a list of questions that profiles the recipient
Hand drawn mockup of present suggestions
Hand drawn mockup of updated present suggestions
On the homepage, users see the value proposition in the hero- "Great gift ideas for loved ones and friends" signifying what they can expect.
After the hero, users are prompted to take action immediately through the "Tell us about the recipient" questionnaire.
The questionnaire for I know the person "very well" features 9 questions and it is longest of the the three options. It is slightly longer as it asks more specific, pertinent questions.
The design also features some tiny details like:
• A ribbon for a scroller and
• Wreath for the radio button options.
This gives the design a unique brand feel to the user.
Choosing "Fairly well", presents the user with fewer questions. Specifically it removes:
- "Any recent loss or repair"
- "Love language (optional)"
These are removed as those questions may be harder to provide an accurate response
Choosing "Not that well" removes one question from "Fairly well". Specifically it removes:
- "This person recently complained about? (choose up to 3)"
This question was removed as it may be hard for the user to determine the answer to this question especially in anonymous situations such as Secret Santa.
A user is presented with present ideas once all questions from the previous stage have been answered.
The user is also presented with a filter which is open by default. The user can toggle between how often they expect the recipient to use the present, the impact they want the present to have and if they would like the present personalised.
This hits at the core of the findings from the UX Research.
This case study has a huge focus on research which eventually feeds to the design.
Personally it reminds me of the importance of talking to users. Even though I had the same issues as the users, the insights gained from talking (mostly listening) to users and what their issues are, provided the specific direction to go and the removal of unwanted features. Here is a recap of my initial premise and concluding findings:
Initial premise: People generally struggle to generate gift ideas for their friends and loved ones.
Concluding Findings: People don't struggle with generating ideas, they struggle with generating ideas for presents that are meaningful and personalised.