Kate - Func Spec

General Scope of Project

  • App that allows people to find, save, buy, and share gift ideas for specific people and/or occasions

Finding Gifts

  • Users can enter information about a gift recipient (age, gender, interests, price range) to be recommended relevant gifts that a person may like
  • Home page will display trending gifts that lots of people have been saving and buying (perhaps based on characteristics of a user's saved recipients)
    • For example: if a user has a lot of saved recipients who are teenage girls, it may recommend trending gifts for teenage girls
  • A user can choose to make their own lists of saved gifts "public", so others can see their list for inspiration and can choose to upvote a list (somehow) if they find it useful so more people will see it

Saving & Buying Gifts

  • Gifts will be saved into lists
    • Lists are created for a recipient from a user's recipient directory
    • Lists are created for a specific occasion, such that a user's lists can be sorted to show all lists for one recipient or all lists for one occasion
  • Gift pages will include links to any and all places the item is available, sorted by price if different websites offer it for different prices. They will also include availability of items on different sites
    • For example: available in sizes S, L, XL on this website available in S, M, and XXL on this website
  • Users will order gifts externally from the website but will be able to mark saved gifts as "purchased" so the website can keep data on what items are both commonly saved and commonly purchased
    • This would also create a "Buy It Again" section/ list for users
      • Could also be sorted as "Buy It Again For (x) User" or "Buy It Again For (x) Occasion"

Sharing Gifts

  • If a person in a user's recipient list is also a user themself, their status as a recipient will be linked to their account
    • This will automatically hide lists of gifts created with them as a recipient from them so as not to show them what they will be getting
  • A person can make lists of gifts they would like to receive themself and send those to people in the app or share it outside the app (which could also serve as incentive to make more people get the app)
  • I was also thinking of including a "Secret Santa" feature that would allow people to create a group of Secret Santa participants and if they are all users their recipient will be shown to their account and maybe an automatic list could be made for the recipient. It could also work if some people aren't users by just sending their recipient to their email (although systems like that already exist)

Home Page Layout

Home page will include

  • brief showing of user's 3-5 most recently accessed lists
  • trending gifts (see: finding gifts above), probably displayed as images so as to break up what might be a text-heavy page
  • links to other main pages: my account, my lists, my recipients (maybe doesn't need to be its own page), trending (gifts and lists made by other users) (see: sharing gifts above)
  • trending lists? I haven't decided if this needs to be on the home page
  • something more? I feel like more could be better but I don't know what else to add

Database Architecture

Adding a Recipient

Criteria required to add a recipient:

  • recipient name
  • recipient age
  • recipient gender (male/female/other or prefer not to say?)
  • recipient interests (I think it will give a list of interests and users can choose which ones they would like)
  • is the recipient a user? if so, it will link to their account and the people will become friends or something like that. But suggestions for that recipient can also be based on the interests they've checked off for themselves or gifts they've saved for themselves.

Creating a List

  • choose recipient
  • choose occasion
  • or - you can make a big list with sublists. So you can choose multiple recipients for one big occasion list and then within the list there will be a mini list for each person
  • choose budget
  • it could also be like say you want to get them three gifts - one clothing item, one technology item, and one book (or whatever) - you can set a budget for each individual item and find multiple options within the budget

Possible Sources of Gifts

Schedule

Edit Gantt

username: e@labcatscoding.com/password: L@bC@t$7

Brainstorming:

  • Plant Minder - is my plant dead?
  • Career Generator - based on your interest
  • Sticker Generator - make stickers
  • Gift Idea Generator - who are you buying for?  age? interest?
  • Recipe App - teen cookbook - link across users - comments/rates
  • Book ideas - track of what you read
  • Decorator - teen based - put in what you have and what your vibe is - give you some ideas - take pics - drag and drop furniture on it.
  • Help organize your desk -
  • Craft generator - put in materials and it gives you a DIY
  • Goal setting app- put in your goal - then it ask you steps - when do you want to finish it.
  • Word finder -
  • A virtual school community to build relationships
  • Activity generator when you are bored
  • Friends activity identification
  • Vacation Planning - way to identify cool places to go based on interest
  • Pinterest like app - Google competitors to Pinterest.  API for pinterest.
  • App to teach parents how to text...
  • App to support small businesses - finding what you want to buy/service - who does it it close to you.
  • App to find sustainable clothing brands - maybe compile into into pinterest thing