End to End Application
UX case study
This case study explores a smart gifting app designed to help users give more thoughtful, personalized gifts by capturing small insights about their loved ones.
Date: Mar 2024 – May 2025
My Roles: UX Research, UX Design, Visual Design, Branding
Software: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Figma
Date: Mar 2024 – May 2025
My Roles: UX Research, UX Design, Visual Design, Branding
Software: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Figma
Gift giving can be stressful — both for the giver and the receiver.
People often feel unsure what to give, especially if they don’t know the person well. On the receiving side, people don’t always get what they actually want, but feel too awkward to ask for something specific.
Traditional registries (like wedding or baby shower ones) are seen as acceptable in certain situations, but they aren’t widely used outside of that.
To explore how people experience giving and receiving gifts, what causes stress or ease, and how they feel about wishlists, group gifting, and sharing preferences — to see if there’s room for a tool that simplifies thoughtful gifting or requesting.
Primary:
Secondary:
Event-Based Focus
Most tools center on wishlists or specific holidays/events.
Basic Features
Common tools only offer save/share lists or simple suggestions.
Shallow Personalization
Suggestions lack emotional tone, nuance, or gifting style.
Short-Term Use
Designed for one-off use — not meant to support ongoing relationships.
No Learning or Memory
Tools don’t build recipient profiles or adapt over time.
AI Feels Cold
AI gift apps are fast, but impersonal and often irrelevant.
Low Adoption
Many tools are niche, with limited use or retention.
Market Opportunity
A clear gap for a thoughtful, emotionally aware tool with long-term value.
6 users, 20-40 min interviews
After talking to users, I sorted their answers into a few clear themes.
Gift giving can cause anxiety in case of unclear preferences, the recipient is difficult to shop for, or last minute pressure.
Receiving unwanted gifts leads to guilt and disappointment.
Giving a gift that lands poorly is emotionally discouraging.
Last-minute gifting increases stress and lowers satisfaction.
People rely on personality, hobbies, and recent comments.
People prefer to guess and observe rather than directly ask.
Wishlists and registries are useful in formal or practical contexts.
But in personal settings, people feel awkward using or sharing them.
Gift giving feels rewarding when it hits the mark.
Group gifting experience varies — poor coordination can cause confusion and even resentment.
People hesitate to express what they want and prefer being surprised.
They’d rather get nothing than a meaningless or generic gift.
After completing user interviews, I ran a follow-up survey (30 respondents) to explore common behaviors and pain points around gift giving.
People enjoy giving gifts overall: average rating 5.5 / 7
But they’re less enthusiastic about searching for gifts: average rating 4.0 / 7
Respondents feel unsure about what to get quite often: average rating 4.4 / 7
Based on the research, I created a user persona to help guide design decisions throughout the process.
A Point of View (POV) statement is the next step in my process. It helps reframe the design challenge into something more focused and actionable — something I can start building solutions around.
A strong POV combines three key parts:
Once the POV is clearly defined, it sets the stage for brainstorming meaningful ideas and solutions.
I’d like to explore ways to help thoughtful but anxious gift givers find meaningful gifts without getting overwhelmed, because relying on vague hints and intuition often leads to second-guessing and stress.
I’d like to explore ways to help gift givers understand what recipients want without making it awkward, because people avoid direct conversations about gifts — leading to missed signals and mismatched expectations.
Brainstorming is the most fun part of the process for me, and I love using various brainstorming techniques.
I’ve given myself a time limit — 20 minutes — and the goal to create as many ideas as I can, no matter how bad or absurd them might seem. I used various techniques — like “Bad ideas only” — and generated multple ideas. Picked the more interesting ones:
As I developed the idea and looked at my user persona, I made a list of features I’d want in the app.
I organized them into categories and picked out the most important ones to focus on for the MVP.
The sitemap outlines how all pages and content connect across the site, making it easier to plan the structure and explain the navigation logic.
I focused on the process of generating gift ideas, mapping out key decisions and actions the user takes along the way.
For this MVP and based on the prioritized feature list, I outlined three essential flows: adding a person, adding an insight (or “hint”), and generating a gift.
Looking at my persona and referencing the task flows and sitemap, I began sketching out low-fidelity wireframes. I prefer working in Figma, using basic shapes and grayscale to focus purely on structure, user flows, and interactions — without getting distracted by UI details.
This approach makes it easier to test ideas, quickly make changes, and even add simple interactions using the prototype tool when needed.
Task flow 1: add an insight from main page
This flow branches into several different ideas, that I tested with users.
Task flow 2: generate gift ideas and save the gift
Branding plays a key role in this project, since it’s built around an emotional experience. The design needs to reflect the thoughtfulness and sentiment behind gift giving — creating a warm, personal, and emotionally resonant user experience.
My design process always begins with identifying the brand’s values and emotional tone. I focus on the feeling I want to evoke and the visual language that helps bring that to life.
Values: Connection, Care, Memory, Effort, Delight
Style: Playful, warm, modern with nostalgic touches
Elements: Pastel color palette, soft rounded shapes, expressive microcopy, gift-inspired visuals (wrapping, tags, ribbons), confetti accents, joyful typography, minimal cards with emotional tone
Sketching logo ideas
Final logo
Showcasing key screens across the experience, rather than illustrating full user flows.
Onboarding and login flow
Adding a person
Adding a Hint
Generating gift ideas
After completing the prototype, I ran usability tests with 4 users, alongside smaller targeted tests involving 11 participants in total.
4 users, 2 flows:
Metrics:
Task is completed easily and every step is clear to each participant.
Dropped screens after testing showed they weren’t needed. Since I removed the universal “Add” button” there was no need for choosing who is the hint about.
There were a few smaller tweaks — like adjusting icons, button styles, and colors — as well as some bigger shifts.
For example, I decided to remove the bottom navigation and move toward a single-page app structure with deeper, contextual navigation.
Dropped screens after testing showed they weren’t needed. Since I removed the universal “Add” button” there was no need for choosing who is the hint about.
Focused on clarity and hierarchy:
Hint Level Update
I updated the ‘Change Question’ button to make it more noticeable, after observing that some users missed it.
Removed unnecessary elements that create visual clutter but don’t help user experience.
Redesigned the Generated Gift Ideas list:
Introduced toast notifications:
