Unwrapped is a website that gives thoughtful gift-givers the perfect gift ideas based on the recipient’s interests and the giver’s personal criteria.
How can we make the gift giving experience simplified and less stressful?
It is no wonder that American author Gary Chapman defines “Gifts” as one of the 5 basic love languages - it is a way that many people receive love and appreciation from another. This is also nothing new; researchers believe that people exchanged symbolic objects between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago [1]. While the concept and nature of gift giving has developed throughout history, today it still plays an important part of society and culture.
However, with so many gift-giving occasions yearly (think birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, life milestones, and so on), thoughtful gift-givers can become overwhelmed and stressed with gift decisions - especially when there is limited time, money, and/or expertise on the person whom the gift is for, among other things.
Using social media platforms, prospective users were identified and an initial survey was conducted with 20 people. The survey questions were focused on the gift giving experience alone. From the 20 people, 5 people were further interviewed with follow-up questions.
User Pain Points
These findings confirmed that gift giving is often a stressful and time-consuming experience for regular gift givers.
My preliminary user research highlighted several pain points of users, validating that individuals would benefit from an easier gift giving experience. Furthermore, my research gave me the insight that the initial ideation step is the most challenging and stressful for users, which is where I decided to focus on.
Based on our target users’ pain points, it was identified that the main pain point for the majority of users was the lengthy and complicated ideation process of gift giving, due to both the considerations of the gift recipient and the gift giver.
Unwrapped makes finding the perfect gift easier and stress-free by providing gift ideas based on the recipient’s interests and the giver’s budget, so that the giver can show their thoughtfulness and appreciation for the recipient.
The user has to simply input a few pieces of information on the website:
Unwrapped will then display a personalized set of gift ideas based on these inputs. Moreover, the user can sort between the results to prioritize and save any results for later reference.
The next steps would be to validate the technical possibilities with the development team and create a MVP which can be tested.
Based on what I learned from speaking to potential users, items on the roadmap for future releases would include:
1. https://dundle.com/magazine/en/history-of-gift-giving-from-cavement-to-gen-z/
2. User research survey: https://forms.gle/Jd4WDkMxsSCuLkVP8
I learned how to develop the problem space and the jobs-to-be-done. A large part of a PM's time should be spent here first before jumping to solutions - in fact, I realized the solution will come very naturally.
I learned how to conduct better user interviews to validate (or invalidate) my hypotheses around the problem. I can now recognize and avoid compliments, fluff, and ideas (Mom Test) that would've sent my solution in the wrong direction.
I learned how to build in public, but also why I should. I saw that by sharing progress of my Co.Lab journey - I gained support and built credibility with relevant audiences - even before having a working product.
