AR-Enabled Gifting Platform

Mărțișor Digital

Commissioner

FEDIUC Ventures

Industry

Gifting Industry, eCommerce

Year

2018 - ongoing

In 2018, Mărțișor tradition in Romania transformed into a contemporary digital service with the introduction of Mărțișor Digital — Romania's mărțișor gift giving service. This is the story of how I made a positive difference to Romanians from all over the world, enabling them to express their feelings towards close ones trough gift giving, while participating in the reduction of pollution with plastic.

Strategy & Thinking



UX/UI Desgin



Branding & Visual Identity



Web Development



Marketing

Objective


Our primary objective is to develop a user-friendly digital solution that enables effortless sending and receiving of gifts across various platforms, fostering meaningful connections even at a distance. Additionally, we aim to design an appealing and captivating interface to reshape consumer behavior, promoting the adoption of digital gifts as a means to mitigate environmental pollution.

Target


Based on our refined assumptions through experimentation, we have identified three main target groups: The Expat, seeking to express emotions from a distance; The Normie, who values the convenience of digital solutions; and the Organization, aiming to efficiently enhance audinece and staff loyalty.

Context


Mărțișor is a cherished Romanian tradition, celebrated on March 1st.


Mărțișor is marking the arrival of spring (originally a celebration of the new year, rooted in the ancient times). It involves the exchange of small decorative trinkets, called "mărțișoare," which are tied with a red and white twisted thread. The red symbolizes vitality and life, while the white represents purity and new beginnings. People give these ornaments to loved ones (usually to women and children) as tokens of appreciation and well-wishes for health, happiness, and prosperity in the coming year. This tradition, deeply rooted in Romanian culture, reflects a celebration of nature's renewal and the enduring connection between people and the changing seasons.

From a weekend project to a service, to a bigger vision for the future.


What began as a fun and experimental weekend project quickly turned into a fascinating journey of digital expression, aimed at blending an eight-millennia-old tradition with cutting-edge technology. The idea of harmonizing ancient customs with modern innovation captivated me, and the project gained initial organic traction, revealing its potential. It became the first of its kind, breathing new life into an ancient tradition, reimagining it for contemporary times. And ultimately becoming the fundation stone of DigitalGift - a full range use cases, global digital gifting service that we will present in a different case study.

The mărțișor market in Romania worths millions euros annually.


The mărțișor industry in Romania is significant, particularly in the weeks leading up to March 1st. It is estimated to be worth millions of euros annually, as the tradition is widely embraced across the country. Small artisans, local craftspeople, and larger commercial producers create a variety of mărțișoare, ranging from handmade traditional designs to modern and mass-produced pieces. Markets, fairs, and online platforms see a surge in activity as people purchase these tokens for friends, family, and colleagues. The industry not only supports local economies but also fosters a connection with cultural heritage.




Discovery


Move fast, break things - learn, repeat.


The discovery phase began with a strong reliance on intuition, quickly materializing in the form of an experimental simple weekend project.

This early version gained traction, allowing us to observe user behavior and gather insights that informed the next steps. We rapidly shifted into a high-intensity effort, which included defining project milestones, auditing the market, and crafting a clear vision.


Simultaneously, we began an in-depth exploration of user needs, behaviors, and pain points to better understand our audience. Alongside this, a technical discovery phase was launched to assess feasibility and identify any potential constraints. We experimented with various technologies, focusing on Augmented Reality (even though it is not fully matured yet) because we believe it is revolutionary and it has the potential to define the future of human - digital interactivity, so we wanted to profit from it's momentum and grow alongside it.

Persona


Our persona hypothesis consisted of one archetype, The Normie, which we used to understand our users needs, desires and varying contexts of use. However, through careful analysis of our initial users and research, we identified sufficient behavioural variables to segment our user audience into for main groups.


The Expath that sends digital gifts to express emotions towards dear ones at a distance.


The Normie who is searching for convenience while purchasing mărțișoare on March 1st.


The Environmetal Activist trying to make a difference by avoiding purchasing plastic objects.


The Organization searching for ways to create audience and staff loyalty.


Gift buying journey



Visualising end-to-end, from macro to micro.

We used experience mapping techniques to visualise and communicate the users end‐to‐end experience across various touch‐points with the proccess of buying and giving a mărțișor gift. We went in stages - from high-level mărțișor purchasing and giving, to in app micro-interactions.

This allowed us to represent user pain‐points and see where we needed to focus our attention. Mapping out the users emotions was key to help us understand the aspirational emotional state we were aiming to design for our users.



Requirements


Designing for what users need and feel


Synthesising goals from our research served as a lens through which we could consider not only what the app should do, but also how it should feel. We believed this would be the difference between delivering a good experience and a great one.

Envisioning the ideal experience


Knowing the target, allowed us to imagine how the app fits into the lives of the users, focusing on how our personas think and behave first, then getting into specifics about interfaces, technologies or business goals.


We've imagined high-level scenarios and explored concepts that formed the backbone of our requirements, and allowed us to express these from both a functional and emotional perspective allowing for further empathy with our users.


Converting data into tasks


By mapping the different things people do in the proccess of buying a gift, allowed us to visualize what functionality and content would be useful. We gathered all ideas and prioritised them based on our target users needs, tech feasibility, and business objectives. Then, we've put together the product features roadmap and backlog and segmented them further into specific to do tasks (design, development and content wise) and added them to our Trello.

Vision


Facilitate effortless sending and receiving of gifts to help people connect even at a distace, while mitigating environmental pollution.

Branding


Defining the brand experience is an essencial and powerful aspect in creating a strong emotional bound between the user and the product.


Understanding the usage contexts of the app and the cultural background, was essencial in creating a clear idea of the tonal expectations of our users. To define the personality of our brand, we developed a set of experience principles. These were used to sense‐check design decisions, articulate core values and describe key attributes the app experience should uphold for both the users and the brand. The principles were used constantly to drive the aesthetic, feel and overall tonal direction of the app.

Principles


Simple and conveniant

Get the basics right.

Be universally easy to use.

Be there when users need it.

Be affordable

Be fast and reliable


Friendly and playful

Design interactions that are joyful.

Have a warm and informal tone of voice.

Engage the users emotionally


Respecting tradition & culture

While, being innovative, make sure to not overstep and loose the essence.

Add to the tradition, rather than reforming it

Visual Identity


Tradition and Technology


A visual identity that seamlessly blends tradition and technology, inspirated from the special moment of traditional gift-giving, folklore and pixel art.

Visual Identity Mood
Brand Logo

Logo Construction


The logo is an interpretation of traditional Romanian patterns found in folk clothing and art, combined with pixel art to symbolize the bridge between tradition and digital innovation.

Brand Logo Contruction Lines

Keywords


digital, traditional, valuable, friendly


#FF0000

#000000

#E5E5E5

#FFFFFF

Traditional powerful colors.


Our color palette incorporates the traditional colors of the holiday: red and white. These colors evoke a sense of tradition, vitality, and festivity, adding power and vibrancy to our brand identity.

Brand Typography - Typeface sample

Montserrat


Montserrat serves as our visual language, embodying modernity and exceptional legibility.



Logo Mockup

Pixels and Traditional Patterns


Our aesthetic treatment combines pixels and the traditional strong color red, juxtaposed with feminine aesthetics and flower photography. This unique blend creates a visually captivating experience that honors tradition while embracing modernity.

Branding Elements
Brand Mockup
Brand Mockup
Brand Mockup
Brand Mockup

The Framework

App Architecture



We've approached the web-app from a mobile first design perspective because it is the only device capable to support the Augmented Reality technology in our context. We went top‐down in defining the overall structure and experience by quickly sketching interface and interactive behaviour ideas. Starting broad and slowly evolving into something tangible expressed through wireframes covering the main screens.

Based on our user journeys, we began to think about particular flows and usage contexts, the opportunities they present and how elements manifesting themselves in the interface would help to support the user. We worked fast, and often jumping straight to prototyping and quick testing.



Introducing

martisor.digital





View it Live

A Clean, Straight-forward User Interface.






Landing


Gifts Gallery


Gift Detail View


Send Screen


Receiver Landing

Considering Big Screens Too


The interface was designed to be responsive and it beautifully scales up, supporting bigger screen sizes and wider aspect ratios. We also considered an efortless way to send the desktop visitors to the mobile experience by generating a QR code to be scanned.





Mărțișr Digital Landing Page
Mărțișr Digital Gifts Gallery Page
Mărțișr Digital Receiver Landing Page




Development

AR gifting WebApp


For security reasons, we won't share too
many details from our inner cooking.

We've built the app from ground up utilising various open source frameworks and libraries. The web development and implementation phase of our project brought together the strengths of Next JS and the immersive capabilities of Augmented Reality technology.

From the beginnings, we were strong advocates of cross-platform, no app download for minimising friction, sacrificing the complexity of the experience using current AR web capabilities. We believe this was a must. Easy access to the experience is more important than the complexity of the experience. Furthermore, we've integrated a branded QR code generator functionality for fast access to mobile experience from desktop or somewhere else.

In order to have seamless, secure and versatile payment methods, we've integrated Stripe and for easy gifts management and future scalability we opted for integrating a CMS designed as a control center, from where we've build the ability to send notifications or turn on and off the service.

The result is a user-friendly, web gifting platform that seamlessly integrates augmented reality, enhances emotional connections, and prioritizes user experience in every interaction, continuing to redefine the way people connect in a more digital world.

Marketing


We've created shorts videos for social media directed by using a hook methodology for the copy, stock footage & ai generated voiceover.

Impact


Adding a new dimenssion to a few millennia tradition & serving people from all over the world.

Stats


An international reach as a local project by spreading to over 10 countries on 3 continents.


Appears 1st on Google for the term "martisor digital" and 3rd for "trimite* martisor".

*send in Romanian


Gets ~2k organic unique views on 1st of March, recurring yearly with a conversion rate* of 5-10%.

*it is a niche service and this high value needs to be readjusted after marketing efforts.


Around 50% returning customers, yearly.

Usage map

Evolution


This local project has validated the concept of sending digital experiences as valuable tokens of appreciation and it naturally gave birth to DigitalGift, a global service, offering a full range of use cases, including holidays, occasions or events. Case study soon.

"Delighted to mix technology with tradition, elevating it to contemporaneity."

Designer signature of Octavian