“An” Place Online gift-card platform
Website UX/UI Design
Personal Project - Case Study
Disclaimer: I did this case study to enhance my experience and this is a non-profit projects.
Images and icons being used in UI design is from Figma and Pexel open sources. Illustrations being used is from Freepik.com
Overview
Initial Idea
My passion for psychology and mental health, especially heightened during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, inspired me to explore design as a tool for well-being. In winter 2021, I conceived AN Place,a platform designed to foster connection, emotional expression, and meaningful celebrations. 'An,' derived from the Vietnamese 'an yên,' signifies peace and tranquility. AN Place aims to cultivate inner peace by facilitating the exchange of love, sincerity, and gifts during special occasions.
Design Thinking Process
Here is the my design thinking process. You can click on the circle to scroll to each part!
Click here if you want to go
straight to design 😁
"I would be the first to admit that since I became an adult, I have never really been big on giving or receiving gifts"
User Reseach
Understanding the user
It would be helpful if there is a platform that can provide me guidance or recommendation on choosing presents to my loved ones.
Yon Gin, 26 years old
I simply just need a place that I can write down my feelings whenever I feel lonely. Reading other people's thoughts also can cheer me up as well
Chloe, 24 years old
Conduct interview
To gain the insights, I interviewed 5 participants over video conference, aged between 20–35 years old.
Discussion Guide Outline
- Demographic
- Their mental health basic information during 2019-2021
- Their thoughts for holidays season
- Their experience for holidays season
- Things that could improve their mental health
Demographic
- Gender
- Age
- Ethnicity
- Location
- Education
- Marital Status
Mental Health Basic
- How do you feel about this year?
- Do you consider yourself as an introvert or extrovert?
- Is there any mental health issues that you're facing with?
- If you have, is any of your friends or family aware of it?
- Do you usually catch up with your friends or family?
- If you do, how do you catch up with them?
- Do you usually express your care/feelings to your friends and family?
- Why?
Thoughts of holiday season
- How do you think about holiday seasons?
- How do you feel during holiday season?
- Your most favorite holiday?
- How would you describe an ideal holiday?
Experience of holiday season
- Can you share with me your most unforgettable holiday experience?
- How do you spend your holidays?
- Do you usually exchange gifts/cards to your friends and family during holidays?
Things that could improve
- Is there anything that you can think of to improve your mental health?
Interview Script
Introduction
- Hello, my name's My Ha. I'll be leading our interview today
- Your feedback is valuable and will be used for research purpose. Just to confirm, we'd like keep this interview to about 30 minutes. Does that still work for you?
- Great. If you need a break or to stop at any time, please let me know
- During this interview, I'll ask you a few questions about your current mental health during the holiday season while the pandemic is still going on
- Please be aware that there are no wrong answers. We're doing interviews like these to hear things from your perspective
- With your permission, I'd like to record this call. The recording will only be used to help us in our research.
General Question
- Shall we kick start with a briefly introduction about yourself?
- Can you share with me your tech habit?
- How likely do you spend your time on digital devices?
- Can you share with me some of the most social media that you often use?
Basic information about your mental health
- Now we move on to some topic related questions. First, can you share with me how do you feel this year. Like in general, how do you feel about the year 2021?
- Do you consider yourself as an introvert or extrovert?
- How does it affect your personality? Does it cause any negative effect on your mental health?
- Is there any mental health that you're struggling with?
- If you have, is any of your friends or family aware of it?
- Do you usually catch up with your friends or family?
- If you do, how do you catch up with them?
- Do you usually express your care/feelings to your friends and family and why?
Your thoughts/experience about holidays
- How do you think/feel about holiday seasons?
- How do you usually spend your holidays?
- Your most favorite holiday?
- How would you describe an ideal holiday?
- Can you share with me your most unforgettable holiday experience?
- Do you usually exchange gifts/cards to your friends and family during holidays?
- Is there anything that you can think of to improve your mental health?
- Have you ever experience an app to gift people?
Affinity Mapping
Interviewee 01: Yon Gin
Interviewee 02: Dhanya
Finding out the results
3/5
Found the year 2021 very challenging and depressed
5/5
Having cutting down time spend on their phone for leisure purposes
3/5
Are dealing with mental health issues
4/5
Rarely send gift or show their feelings for their loved ones
Their thoughts about holiday season
Some reasons that make most of them don't gift
Don't know what to gift
Gifting is not their habit
Because of Covid, they don't really gather with their friends anymore
Too busy to think about this
According to the user research section, I found that the user faced significant pain points such as they have been facing quite a number of mental health issues and they can't find a place to share about it; they don't have a lot of interactive activities to do with their family and friends; holiday season began losing its meaning to them.
Inspired by this insight...
It would be helpful if we have a platform that can.
- Share your thoughts or feelings anytime without exposing your personal information
- Help to organize a group exchange gifts to your loved ones
- Recommend gifting options for you
- Easily to help you invite people through social media
Market Research
There are mostly three kinds of similar platform which are:
- Gifting platform for company
- Gifting platform for individual
- Combination between the previous two
Among the three types above, for now, I will mostly pay attention to the second one—gifting platform for
individual. The objective of this project is to help people to convey care and concern to their loved ones
so the goal for now is "Quality is more important than quantity".
I found Draw Names and Secret Santa by online researching and interviewing people. This two platform are the
quite popular in Singapore. Their main functionality is to create a gift exchange group and they have been
doing great on it. They only have one theme, Christmas, through out the whole year regardless other public
holidays in Singapore. Nonetheless, my platform will be more than that. I will add on a new functionality that
can allow the user to share their feelings, their thoughts to the community under a form of writing a card
and hang in the wall. And further after the platform functioned well, I can develop it into a simple, friendly
social network with a gift finder e-commerce market and I will have different themes following some public
holidays as well.
Problem Identification
Here are some problems that I observed from the user's interview
Problem #1
I have a difficulty in choosing present for my friend
Problem #2
Because of Covid I can't go back home to meet my parents, so I can't send gift to them properly
Problem #3
I usually feel lonely during holidays
Problem #4
I want to share my holiday story
How might we statement
- How might we provide a place to spread positivity and cheer up the user's feeling
- How might we provide a platform for the user to organize a gift exchange group to their friends in special occasion
Information Architecture
According to my user research and interview, their needs of this platform are not just organizing a gift exchange group function, but they also want a place that they can always come to share their thoughts and feelings on a daily basis as well as give them advice on picking the presents for their loved ones.
Mostly my target audience spend their time on laptop, and I also want to focus more on the UI interaction for this project to increase the user experience and bring the Christmas positive vibe to them so I have decided desktop view to be my main viewport.
These are some of the main features in the website for now. Later in the future I will develop more on the Gifting Recommendation function and maybe link it to another e-commerce platform.
User Flow
Here are three main flow for the website
Flow #1 Cardwall
This is the flow that the user can read and write card in Cardwall page
Flow #2: Send message | View message box
This is the flow that the user can send message and view message box in Send message page
Flow #3: Organize gift exchange group | View my group
This is the flow that the user can organize and view their gift exchange group
Design & Prototype
Click here to see the full prototype ---------------------------- ---->
Home page
The home page intention is to bring the comfort to the user so that they feel they are welcome in this An
place. From here, the user can access to other features by the navigation menu or by interacting with the
objects on the screen.
We can customize to the home page theme design following the holidays throughout the year
Cardwall
The Cardwall page is a place where you can find gift cards from other people around the world and it is also a place that you can write your own card
Send Message
If you want to send a gift card to your friend, you can always use this feature to write your message. You can also download this card as a pdf to print out so that memory never fades.
Exchange Gift
If you want to send a gift card to your friend, you can always use this feature to write your message. You can also download this card as a pdf to print out so that memory never fades.
User testing
I did user testing on 2 users and these are the insight from the user testing interview that I have conducted. The three flow that I test on are:
Difficulty that they have faced while trying the website:
Don’t understand the cardwall page
- UI of home page
- Can't review information after they organize a gift exchange group
- Missing name drawing feature in gift exchange page
Page description missing
Hoverstate of cardwall from home page
How to improve?
- Add a short description in cardwall to briefly explain what the user can do in this page
- Shift the position of the cardwall hover state in home page
- Build a page for them to review all the group that they have organised
- Build drawing name feature in exchange gift page
Add cardwall page description
Shift hoverstate of cardwall from home page
Build review group for gift exchange page
Add drawing name feature
Conclusion
Project Summary
Beyond UX and UI skills, this experience has cultivated my patience—essential for thorough research, deep audience empathy, and effective solution development. Moving forward, I will prioritize developing the gift recommendation feature and then gradually expand AN Place's social community.
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