The Short Bucket List: A tool for making memorable gifts

This week I attended a Design Thinking workshop in Washington DC. The aim was to improve the gift giving experience. As I am quite bad with picking gifts, I had a chance to work on a tool that would help me and others who face the same challenge.

 While gifts are usually material objects, probably the most memorable gifts are the experience ones such as learning to fly an airplane, parachute jump etc.

Many people have “Bucket Lists” – things to do before they die.

So, I created this prototype of a tool for making memorable experience gifts.

The gift giver asks the future recipient of the gift to fill in this short bucket list with up to 5 things they would like to do before passing away. (Each item on the list is written on a post it)

Subsequently, the items on the list are removed from the piece of paper and put into the “Randomizer”

After mixing the options, one is picked at random and that is the gift:

Now the gift giver knows what to offer as a gift, the gift receiver doesn’t know what she will get – surprise element, but she will get for sure something she wants because she picked the options.

The gift giver has the option of sharing the experience with the receiver (e.g. do a parachute jump together).

Of course, the gift giver can cheat and draw again if she doesn’t like what was randomly selected.

Naturally, everything could be done digitally.