Consumer · Discovery · 2026
Zemo
A gift discovery experience built around intent
3
Requirements kept in v1 scope
Day 1
Adoption from target audience
My role
- Product strategy & positioning
- User research & requirement definition
- Experience design
- Product engineering
Stack
Business problem
Choosing a meaningful gift is a high-effort, low-confidence decision. Marketplaces optimise for catalogue breadth, which leaves the buyer with more options and less certainty.
Research & discovery
Lightweight user research into gifting behaviour surfaced the real job-to-be-done: buyers are not shopping for products, they are looking for confirmation that a choice will land emotionally.
Requirements & scope
I scoped the MVP around three things only — guided discovery, personalisation, and shareability — and explicitly cut catalogue depth, accounts, and social features from v1.
Solution
Launched an MVP centred on a fast, curated discovery flow that narrows options quickly rather than expanding them.
Business impact
Meaningful first-day traction and early adoption from the target audience, validating guided discovery as the product's core mechanic.
What I'd carry forward
- In discovery products, constraint is the feature — fewer good options beat many adequate ones.
- Emotional confidence is measurable through hesitation, revisits, and share behaviour.