PresentSphere
Remember their birthday. Know what they love. Plan something thoughtful, and keep the surprise.
- The work
- Family gifting app
- My role
- Product strategy, identity, app and website development
- Year
- 2026
Thoughtful gifts begin with knowing someone. PresentSphere brings birthdays, interests, hints and private plans into one family space, so an original idea can become a gift without spoiling the surprise.
The challenge.
Families overlap. A child may belong to several circles without needing an account, while the adults planning a gift need a smaller, private conversation. The product had to make those relationships understandable and enforce the same boundaries behind the interface.
Who can see this?
Explore PresentSphere’s separate sharing boundaries with an adult recipient.
Decisions that
shaped the work.
Start with the person
I centered the experience on upcoming occasions and durable gift profiles. Interests and preferences give a buyer somewhere to start, even when there is no wishlist. Adults can manage profiles for children and relatives, explicitly choosing which circles receive that information.
Separate sharing from the surprise
Profile sharing, private ideas and gift collaboration have separate permissions. Only accepted collaborators can see shared plan content; the recipient is excluded. Private notes and original captured messages stay with the plan’s creator. Database policies and atomic commands carry these rules through invitations, reservations and access removal.
Make recovery part of saving
A slow connection should not turn one gift into two. Stable submission identifiers let the app reconcile an uncertain response before retrying. The interface distinguishes a confirmed save from a failed refresh, while account changes invalidate old callbacks and retained screens.
A closer look.
A person before a shopping list. Actual app screen with a fictional family example.
The idea, the thought behind it and a clear privacy state stay together.
One product across familiar devices
I built the Expo and React Native application, Supabase data model and separate Next.js public website around the same green-and-lavender identity. Browser history preserves useful drafts and scroll positions, with inactive screens kept out of keyboard and assistive navigation. The browser app is available to approved testers, with Android release preparation underway.
What I take forward.
The central design decision is also the central engineering decision: sharing useful context about someone should never silently share the work of surprising them.
