Conversational AI Gift Finder
We designed a Conversational AI Gift Finder that dynamically adapts to individual user preferences, behaviors, and context. By delivering tailored recommendations through an intuitive, chat-like interface, this solution aims to increase engagement and satisfaction by finding the perfect gifts.
My Role
Experience Designer
Responsible for end-to-end UX strategy, from problem definition to testing prototypes
Team
3 Product Managers
3 Designers
6 Engineers
Timeline
8 weeks
Tools
Figma, Miro, Paper & pen
Problem
The app’s one-size-fits-all gift recommendations fail to reflect users’ unique preferences and intentions, leading to frustration, disengagement, and elevated abandonment rates. Personalized experiences are essential to meet diverse user needs effectively.
Outcome
To solve this problem, we designed a Conversational AI Gift Finder that delivers personalized recommendations by adapting to each user’s inputs and behavior.
Understanding the problem
Generic Gift Suggestions:
Users often saw irrelevant, broad recommendations that didn’t reflect their needs.
Time-Consuming Process
Finding the right gift was slow and required multiple manual filters.
Diverse User Preferences
Different occasions, budgets, and recipient interests were not accounted for.
Lack of Relevance
Users expected context-aware recommendations (recipient, event, price range), but the system fell short.
Low Engagement
Without an interactive, human-like flow, the experience felt transactional and unengaging.
Decision Fatigue
Overwhelmed by poor suggestions, many users abandoned the flow altogether.
Goals
Personalization
Tailor recommendations using user inputs (recipient’s age, interests, budget).
Interactive Experience
Deliver suggestions in a dynamic, conversational format.
Efficiency
Streamline the process with quick, relevant results.
User Satisfaction
Increase delight and trust through tailored, enjoyable interactions.
Designs
Usability Study
An unmoderated usability test was conducted to evaluate two variations of the gift finder experience (e.g., size, color). The objective was to uncover usability issues and collect user feedback to help shape an optimal user experience.
Objectives
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Assess the effectiveness of the Gift Finder in assisting users to discover and narrow down product selections.
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Evaluate the usability of browsing and selecting product attributes (e.g., size, color)
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Compare user satisfaction and usability across the two design variations.
Research Findings
Evaluate the effectiveness of Gift Finder in helping users find and narrow down on a product selection.
16/17
Able to find Apple gift ideas for their friends with ease
12/17
Able to narrow down to iPads with ease using prompt suggestions.
Some participants failed to accomplish this task because they were unfamiliar with the name of Apple's tablet product
Determine the usability of browsing and choosing product attributes (e.g., size and color).
14/17
Found 512GB iPad Mini with ease using New product card design.
6/17
Found 512GB iPad Mini variant using the product carousels.
Those who failed did not find the “Options for Mini prompt suggestion, so they did not see the product card.
Participants feedback on Gift finder
"I really like the idea of the Gift Finder . I think it s a super helpful feature for people who are trying to decide on the right gift".
"It was fun trying this feature out!"
"WAY too slow, and the whole conversational nature of it is just silly. I’d much prefer traditional filters to this AI crap".
"I liked it very much. Works well and makes it easier".
"This was a new and innovative survey".
Key Takeaways
Assess how effectively the Gift Finder supports users in discovering and narrowing down suitable product options.
Finding
Although most participants easily discovered Apple gift ideas, a few experienced difficulty filtering specifically for iPads.
Recommendations
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Enhance Prompt Suggestions: Make prompt suggestions more intuitive and context-aware to better guide users.
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Analyze User Behavior: Collect additional data on how users interact with suggestion prompts compared to free-form input fields.
Determine the usability of browsing and choosing product attributes (e.g., size and color).
While most participants successfully found the 512GB iPad Mini with the product card design, most participants struggled to find it using the product carousels.
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Improve Carousel Design: Add visual indicators to signal that more options are available horizontally. Update product card width to give more affordance to horizontal scroll.
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Prioritize Popular Variants: Simplify the display of pro duct variations by highlighting key options first.
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Enhance Prompt Visibility and Clarity: Make prompt suggestions more prominent and visually distinct.
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Improve Prompt Suggestions: Refine the prompt suggestions to allow users to target results by specific attributes. Make prompt suggestions more specific and actionable. Ensure that search results prominently display the requested variants.
Next steps
After the successful launch of this feature in the app, we scaled it to the web, mobile and desktop.