Case study — Android
Gift Guide
An Android app for narrowing down gift ideas. Instead of scrolling generic "gift ideas" lists, you describe the person in a few short prompts and get a small set of suggestions tied to what you said.
- Role
- Solo — design and development
- Timeline
- Independent project, 2025
- Stack
- Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, ViewModel, Room/DataStore
The problem
Buying a gift is an open-ended problem. Most people end up bouncing between tabs, searching "gift ideas for mom," and scrolling lists that were written for nobody in particular.
Gift Guide narrows the problem instead: it asks a few questions about the recipient — who they are, the occasion, their interests, your budget — and turns the answers into a short list of suggestions that reference what you actually said.
How it works
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Describe the person
The entry screen asks who the gift is for, the occasion, their interests and personality, and a budget range. The prompts are conversational — "How would you describe them to a friend?" — with free-text fields rather than dropdowns.
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Review suggestions
The description goes to a small recommendation endpoint and comes back as a list of idea cards. Each card has a title, a line or two explaining why it fits the description, and an optional price note. The layout is a plain vertical list — easy to scan, nothing competing for attention.
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Save ideas for later
Saved ideas go to a local list on the device, filterable by person or occasion, with a "purchased" state for ideas you've used. There's no account or sync on purpose — the app behaves like a planning notebook.
Design decisions
The app is two tabs — New ideas and Saved — so it's always clear where live results and long-term planning live. No drawers, no deep menus.
Suggestion cards are laid out like index cards: title, short explanation, consistent spacing. Saving something uses a small inline confirmation rather than a modal, so you stay in the list while you work through ideas.
Empty states do some teaching. Before you've saved anything, the Saved tab explains what will show up there and points you to your first search, instead of sitting blank.
What I'd build next
- Compare shortlists. Pin a few ideas and see them side by side, with how each connects back to the description.
- Shareable lists. A plain link someone can send to family to plan a gift together, without accounts.
- Adjustable results. Nudge a set of ideas — more practical, more handmade — without re-entering the whole description.