Giftswapper is a service & platform that makes gift-swapping more meaningful by creating matches based on shared interests rather than random chance.

Project Overview

CONTEXT: Presently is a group gifting platform that helps organizing events. They want to introduce a new feature called GiftSwapper, that plans to reinvent the traditional and monotonous, gift exchange.

PROBLEM: Presently’s CEO came to us with a prototype and a half-fleshed out idea. She was unhappy with the current design and unsure if the product was even viable for the current market. As a final deliverable, she asked for an improved prototype that could be presented to investors. - Our top priorities are market research and improving the current UI.

KEY OBJECTIVES:

  1. How Might We improve the established ritual of gift-swapping?

  2. How might We eliminate generic presents that end up in the garbage?

  3. How Might We turn the ritual of thoughtless gift-swapping into a realtionship building event with lasting benefits for particiapnts?

ROLE 🎨 : Lead UI & Graphic Designer (team of 4)

TIMELINE ⏰ : 4 Week Design Sprint

TOOLS 🧰 : Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, Maze, Loom, Google Suite

Research:

Survey

The first question we asked ourselves is “Is this product worth making?” To answer that, we conducted a survey of 30 users. These are their results:

  • 76% of users participate in gift exchanges yearly, specifically in Corporate Settings.

  • 96% of these users enjoy gift exchanges, but find purchasing a meaningful gift difficult.

  • 53% prefer sentimental gifts over any other gift. The next highest category was 21% of users for practical gifts.

  • 91% of users think gift exchanges are stressful.

TAKEAWAY: There is a market for GiftSwapper and a problem for it to solve.

Competitive Analysis

The market for gift-exchange platforms is pretty under-saturated, however there are a few popular sites I thought would be important to look at: Elfster, Weve, and White Elephant Online. In our Competitive Analysis, I looked at what features each of these competitors offered, and compared them to Giftswappers current platform. We found that each competitor offered 5 or more features than Giftswapper.

CONCLUSION: We want to add an onboarding process, visual themes, wishlists, and secret Q&A.

Comparative Analysis:

For the comparative analysis I looked at: Uncommon Goods, Gifts for Good, and Cofetti. Each of theses sites exemplified one or more of the features we wanted to introduce: Wishlists, Product Finder / Selection Feature, Virtual Environments, Interactions, and how the service is supported. They also had exceptional UI. We took these as inspiration.

Interviews

I conducted 3 interviews with users about their experience with gift-swapping, (our team collected a total of 13 interviews). All participants were between the ages of 24 and 60. Here are some key takeaways:

  • 64.3% of interviewees reported not knowing what to get their person for a gift, due to lack of knowledge of their interests

  • 42.9% of interviewees said the gifts they received in a gift exchange are always generic/lame and end up in the trash

CONCLUSION: From our interviews, we solidified the data and identified 3 different personas, but for the scope of this project we chose to just go forward with one. So, meet Brad.

Now that we know we are creating a platform to help Brad enjoy gift-exchanges, how does he feel about Giftswapper’s current platform? I created a Journey Map to Answer that question.

Meet Brad

A pragmatist in all areas of life, Brand wants to bond and celebrate occasions with his coworkers but doesn't want to waste time or give a present his gif-tee won't enjoy.

Question: How might we help Brad enjoy participating in a gift exchange?

Journey Map

We followed the current GiftSwapper flow and discovered a number of specific pain points for Brad. For example, when users are prompted to select their interests, the categories listed are impersonal and very few. Brad doesn’t think this will help anyone pick out a more meaningful gift for him. This Journey Map allowed our team to visualize what changes needed to be made, from Brad’s perspective. We were able to pin-point where we needed to expand and develop the current flow, so that it met Brad’s needs. We developed several “opportunities” which would guide our designs.

Ideation:

After our initial research, we completed 2 Design Studios, developed a new user flow, and produced a low and mid-fi prototype. The User Flow was crucial in helping us determine what we wanted to focus on in our 4 weeks, which at this point had boiled down to two. We knew what problem we wanted to fix, but we had to figure out what process would make the most sense to do it. So, we created a retrospective User flow, and a proposed user flow, to analyze our improvements. Overall I am very happy with what my team and I decided to produce in our final product.

Retrospective User Flow

Proposed User Flow

Defining Style

With our intentions laid out, we could begin defining our UI elements. We developed an in-depth style guide to ensure our team stayed on brand throughout the design process. This will also allow future design teams to continue to iterate and expand.

GiftSwapper Desktop Prototype:

Our final deliverable to the Founder was a 28-screen prototype. It outlines the path a user would take to enter a code to join a swap then creating a GiftSwapper account. This user path also address the pain points expressed through our Persona. Our goal with Giftswapper was to make the gift exchange process quick, easy, and engaging, and I think we did that.

Here you can watch a walkthrough:

Thanks for making it to the end!