This is a major gift giving season, and there are countless gift guides being published by retailers and media outlets. These gift guides typically group folks into broad groups by demographic like “Top Gifts for Dads” or “Gifts for your Girlfriend”, or by interest-group like “Gifts for the Cook” or “Hostess Gifts”. However, this season, Vox published a slightly different take in an article How to become a truly excellent gift giver. I was struck by how many of their points are actually UX principles or practices.
The first lesson listed was to pay attention to the recipient, even writing a mini bio of the person. This of course is UX research at its core, creating a user profile to build a user journey. The article also introduces a three point framework to ask yourself when gift giving: “Can I introduce you to something you might not otherwise know about? Can I get you a nicer version of something than you would buy for yourself? Can I make you feel seen?” These roughly apply to user experiences when we convert them to: Can I introduce you to an experience you might not know about? Can I delight you by providing a better experience than you were expecting? Can I meet your needs, perhaps needs you might not even realize you have?
The more we pay attention to our users, the better the outcomes. This is true whether designing and building a digital ecommerce experience or finding a meaningful gift for a recipient. When doing the below exercise my team generated many themes that are applicable to both problems. Create a similar seasonally-themed learning activity with your team below.
STAND-UP EXERCISE
This exercise could be part of a larger end-of-year gathering, or trimmed to fit into a stand-up or two.
Each team member is asked to add to the virtual whiteboard an image of a gift that they were happy to receive. I asked the team to only use gifts that were a surprise, not something they’d asked for or added to a wish list, but the gift could be from any occasion. Due to size, my team then broke into breakout groups, to discuss their gifts and decide on one to present back to the larger gathering. The giftee told their story of why it was such a great gift to recieve and what it has meant to them.
Then as a team we discussed learnings or themes that emerged, especially ones that are relevant to user empathy and user understanding. Adding them to a visual whiteboard and grouping them helps facilitate discussion. How can we take these themes of gift-giving into our user research and our product team prioritization?
