We'd love your feedback. I waited to post it here untill everyone get their christmas gifts, so you don't think we are trying to sell.
if you saw anything you like or hate please let us know.
Adam
If you don't select a name for the person you are buying the gift for many of the questions don't scan that well. Also you use he/she as the generic but one of the follow on questions is sex to which I answered and relationship to which I also answered so would have made more sense to personalise the question a little more.
Some of the questions should allow multiple response answers , e.g. does person play an instrument, dance, play in drama, none/I don't know. The person I was thinking of does all 3!
Not sure whether it's important but I would have thought that for some questions there is a big difference between none (or in some cases it should no) and I don't know.
I also save this cosmetic changes with questions to my to-do list. Thanks :)
I think it is a great idea. Always struggling to pick a gift. I like the phone charger suggestion. I like how you ask for feedback presumably to make the results better next time.
Will it be a success? I guess it depends on how the word will be spread? Do people want to admit they used something like this to buy a gift for someone?
Another idea for you - can you scan a Facebook account to gather a lot of the information you ask? Would save a lot of typing. It could also send you an email when it is someone's birthday with a recommendation of the present.
A common theme in the how to start a start-up is to do things that don't scale. What if you had a phone line that you answer, people can phone and give the information and you suggest a present. What if you order it for them? You will get a lot of information about the nuances of choosing a present, which can be fed into your algorithm.
In my example the person hates to read books on self development, but likes trashy novels, but on the other hand is very ambitious. It suggest all kinds of self improvement books but I had to keep saying no.
I think the great utility of your app (which I like very much by the way) is getting gift ideas for people you barely know (coworkers, distant relatives, etc). So I don't know the answers to those questions, but my social network could probably figure it out.
I filled out the wizard about my girlfriend who likes the Steelers, and you showed me a men's Seattle Seahawks shirt: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/jacwd2ulo9hdl9o/q_gxfb...
There are ways to automate the process of gender classification, you should look into them for situations like this considering I explicitly filled in "female" and "Steelers" into your wizard.
Firstly well done on having the guts to show this to people. Doing that scares the hell out of me.
I think you've picked a problem worth solving, at least for some people - me included. I'm crap at choosing gifts, and always have been. Nowadays I choose my wife's presents by asking her what she'd like ;-). If someone could actually build a system that would consistently recommend appropriate gifts I think I'd pay to use it.
In my unqualified opinion, this is a hard problem, and I think you have a lot of work in front of you. But you have to start somewhere. I won't comment on the ui because that's irrelevant at this point. But you might find it useful if I go through my answers and your suggestions. I was answering about my wife who is in her 40s.
The most relevant answers to your questions were a) Kasabian (favourite band), b) One hundred years of solitude (favourite book) and c) spirits (re the choice of wine/beer/spirits).
The suggestions I got were below, with my comments:
1) This is all yours, an Alt J album - [Good suggestion, she already has it]
2) Velociraptor - a Kasabian album - [Again she already has this, but then they're her favourite band]
3) A summary of Love in the time of cholera [Not sure why the summary as opposed to the book. In any case she's already read it, but if she hadn't it would have been a good choice.]
4) Diary of a wimpy kid - the long haul [an odd suggestion given her age, unless I'm missing something. My son says it's a kids' book]
5) The complete book of spirits [ presumably based on the wine/beer/spirits question. I asked her about this and she wasn't keen]
6) A book about Kasabian - [ good suggestion ]
7) KATGI Heart Shape Pendant Necklace [ interesting - I asked my daughter, who thought her mum would like it. I then asked my wife, who frowned and said no ;-) ]
Anyway, not sure if that's helpful. Feel free to ask me anything.
BTW, an idea for you. Some of my friends are extremely good at choosing gifts. Maybe talking to people with that talent would help you work out what makes them good at it.
Good luck.
It'd be helpful to have a back n forth between items, or even better show them as a list (maybe paginate and generate more ideas on each page?). I want to see the options before settling on one.
What I liked best was it gave me a category that works (smartwatch) which spurred an idea for an actual gift- a Fitbit.
I've actually looked for this type of site before. Useful concept if it works.
I'd like to see a list of suggestions right after question #1 that change as you answer more and more questions. That gives me the option of either continuing or not without investing a lot of energy.
You could have the questions be "never ending" with that design.
"Even if Sarah is a experienced drinker you can widen his knowledge by giving her this book."
I'm dating a twenty-two yo female and I can choose 13-16 or 27-35.
Not sure if it's intentional.
I wish clicking a text input auto-selected that radio button, and that one or the other was defaulted on page load.
Additionally, I had to answer a "her favorite sports figure" even though I had already said she didn't like sports.
The last choice, "dance / instrument / something else" should be a checkbox system, so that I can select multiples, instead of a radio where I can only pick one.
Outside of that, I wasn't overly impressed with the gift idea results. They seem to be exact matches to "things i said she was interested in," plus some jewelry thrown in, which she is very uninterested in.