Unlocking £32k revenue with new gifting feature

• To understand how access works via QR in the Candide iOS and Android app, I spoke to 10 visitors at The Newt in Somerset gate about their entry experience. I noticed first-time anxiety of using QR passes in older individuals (20% of garden visitors are 65+) and connectivity issues due to patchy mobile data coverage.
• To learn about the needs of likely gifters and receivers, I interviewed 5 who'd gifted and 5 who'd received a membership or subscription within 2 years via userinterviews.com. To recruit quickly, the gift could be in a range of attractions, not just public gardens. I asked about their experience of buying, receiving and using, prompting for details such as cost considerations, delivery method, date and more.
• Key themes across gifters and receivers included value for money as the top driver, concern that older receivers would struggle to use a digital gift, a preference for something physical, and the risk of gifting to someone who already has a membership.

"I have a very old Blackberry so I couldn't access the app and certainly my parents couldn't access that — I struggle with the NHS app as it is." — Moreen, 59

• For technical inspiration, I reviewed the gifting flows of the largest public garden organisations, the National Trust, RHS and Blenheim Palace. All provided a physical membership, with the National Trust promoting cheaper pricing on condition of Direct Debit and the RHS offering a free pair of binoculars.

To address the opportunities identified in my research, I wrote 20 'how might we' statements. I used a team workshop to generate and prioritise Now, Next and Later solutions based on complexity. The top statements guided the following design moves.

• To make things simple for both gifters and receivers, I designed a progressively disclosed multi-step flow with easy navigation, plain language, and ability to recover from errors.
• I designed larger primary buttons, increased spacing between elements to support usability for older recipients, ensuring WCAG AAA standards where possible.
• To support the multiple-holder requirement, the flow would adapt based on whether the garden supports it, requires both names, and whether the gifter chooses multiple holders.
• To reassure gifters that the recipient will be able to use the membership, I included a pre-start link at the beginning that showed what the experience would be like for receivers.

Candide had a date picker that visitors used to select a day ticket. However, this didn't support selecting dates far in the future. This was a problem because gifters would likely need to choose months in advance, so I designed a new one that enabled this.

• I couldn't offer an optional physical insert with a QR code for version 1 due to the timeline, but understood that we would learn a lot from version 1 that we could incorporate into the design of a physical insert.
• To make a digital gift feel meaningful in the absence of a physical one, I added a personalised message at checkout and a polished receiver email.
• To make value obvious for gifters, I'd planned to show how many visits it would take to break-even vs day tickets. However, due to the timeline, for version 1 I opted to front-load the garden imagery and include copy that describes how the garden changes throughout the year.

• To help less technically-able visitors to access their membership, I designed a way to access the QR online instead of via the app, requiring less mobile data. And I incorporated the activation code inside the recipient email, meaning one-click access if already logged in. Visitors could change their details on activation if needed.
• To help receivers without a mobile device or internet connection, I prompted gifters to provide accurate name and email details to enable gate staff look up.
• To solve for gifting to existing members, allowing the choice to extend a membership was the most voted solution in the workshop. However, this is complex from a user perspective and would require more research to reduce risk, so I worked with the team and settled on treating activation as the point of purchase. This meant memberships were pre-paid with no expiry date.
• This solved Candide's constraint regarding selling memberships for following years and made our solution more attractive to other gardens with fixed-term seasonal products. They wouldn't be forced into a rolling membership model.

• I planned to test the gifting and receiving prototype with 5 gifters and receivers in a moderated usability session, but the deadline meant this wasn't doable.
• To identify any major issues with the prototypes in the least amount of time, I instead ran an unmoderated usability test via usertesting.com with 20 participants, being sure to have a proportion of older people.
• All participants except a few due to technical issues completed the tasks. No major issues.
• Some participants weren't clear about how they could attend the garden on a joint membership without the primary holder with them, so I adjusted the copy to make it clearer.