Rethinking the Gift-Giving Experience
8.30.2021
As an introduction exercise to understand the process of Human-Centered Design, we were instructed to pair up with someone to interview and help them solve a problem that they have when giving gifts. My partner, Kerri, and I interviewed each other about our last gift-giving experiences and came up with a problem and a solution for each other. We used the human-centered design process to be inspired by the interview, generate ideas based on the obstacle, and roughly implement the final idea. Through the interview, we were able to figure out what the other person mainly went through when giving a gift. As soon as we identified the issue, we iterated several abstract to realistic ideas to help inspire the ideation phase. Next, we focused on one of those ideas and made it into a viable solution. For implementation, we simply made a quick and rough prototype and had the other person test it out to find things that were successful and things that were not.
Kerri’s prototype for me: Subscribe for a Surprise!
When interviewing me, Kerri identified my problem as Jenna wants to give gifts that are not only on special occasions, but she struggles with coming up with a surprise all the time. Kerri’s solution was a surprise subscription box that would come once a month, would take no longer than 10 minutes to set up, and would contain all needed things to create a surprise gift or experience for the gift receiver. Her prototype materialized a box that had a surprise “date” in it. It contained where we would have this date, what playlist we would listen to, what we would eat, and even the decorations to put up for the date. There were plenty of great things about her idea and we both think it is something that could exist and succeed in the real world. The thing I would have added was a way to personalize the boxes, such as who the gift-receiver would be, or other information about the gift receiver that would make the surprise box personalized for them.
My prototype for Kerri: Friendship Evaluator
When interviewing me, Kerri identified my problem as Jenna wants to give gifts that are not only on special occasions, but she struggles with coming up with a surprise all the time. Kerri’s solution was a surprise subscription box that would come once a month, would take no longer than 10 minutes to set up, and would contain all needed things to create a surprise gift or experience for the gift receiver. Her prototype materialized a box that had a surprise “date” in it. It contained where we would have this date, what playlist we would listen to, what we would eat, and even the decorations to put up for the date. There were plenty of great things about her idea and we both think it is something that could exist and succeed in the real world. The thing I would have added was a way to personalize the boxes, such as who the gift-receiver would be, or other information about the gift receiver that would make the surprise box personalized for them.
My prototype for Kerri: Friendship Evaluator
When I was interviewing Kerri, I realized that she thought deeply about the relationship she has with the gift receiver and the love language about the gift receiver themself. She would give a gift based on the friendship she had with the person, so to know what gift to get, Kerri would evaluate their friendship. My solution was a friendship evaluator quiz that would help to see what similarities Kerri has with her gift receiver. It would be like a personality test for their friendship, and that is the “person” she would be getting the gift for. My prototype depicts a three-part card system that had one card with questions, and two cards with response bubbles. The question card has sixteen questions, and both response cards have sixteen bubbles numbered one through sixteen. Each person would take a response card and answer yes or no questions individually. If their answer was yes, they would punch a hole through that bubble, and if their answer was no, they would leave the bubble unpunched. When they are both done, they would overlap their cards to create their “friendship card.” The holes that existed on both their cards would be the answers used to refer to the kind of friendship that they have. Kerri would then know what kind of gift would be best for the friendship that she has with the gift receiver. The prototype was successful in displaying how it would work, but there were still questions left to be answered. Would you have to trick your friend into taking the quiz? Would this make them suspicious about your gift? Would the evaluation always be accurate?
There is growth for both our projects, but this was a good way to experience what it was like to be in the position of a human-centered designer. It forced us to think quickly about solutions and break our ideas down as much as we would build them up to ensure they would be at their strongest.
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