Buying a gift card has largely remained the same since gift cards were invented in 1994. Other than the evolution of physical gift cards to digital, the personalization experience of gift cards has lagged behind. Enter GiftNow, a revolutionary gifting solution for retailers that integrates the best of gift cards with the speed and personalization capabilities of digital. As a digital-first solution, GiftNow offers digital gift cards for retailers, and as of 2020, we have introduced physical gift cards as part of our bundled gift card offering.

Project scope

• Redesign the gift card checkout experience with multi-item and physical gift cards

• Improve all aspects of the user experience, from UI, content, visuals, to emails

• Transition checkout solution from single to multi-item capability

• Redefine the logic and flow of the gift card checkout, purchase, and delivery experience

What’s at stake

• External
  Gift cards are a mature market with a few dominant players. As a relatively new entrant to the market, providing key differentiating user experiences, capabilities and features are crucial to close competitive gaps and increase our ability to close deals and win new clients.

• Internal
  The existing experience was designed in a world where scalability was less of a priority, and rather, quick experiments and market validation. As a result, the existing infrastructure accumulated significant design, engineering, and technical debt. To deploy a new gift card experience with a new client took enormous effort, let alone the maintenance costs; the approach was not sustainable and prohibitive to business growth.

Opportunity

As Product Design Lead, I had a unique and strategic opportunity to help demonstrate the value of design to the business, going beyond just an execution function to a strategic function that influences business outcomes in more ways than creation, but systems. From the beginning, I partnered closely with my product management peers to advocate for the concept of utilizing the gift card redesign project under a design systems approach. The business case was clear to piggyback a crucial strategic design project under the wing of a must-do redesign.

• Drive scalability for the business and reducing technical debt by introducing design systems and reusable components

• Transform the way we design, develop, deploy, and maintain user experiences with scale, quality, and cost-effectively