With the recent opening of an ALDI grocery store in my neighborhood, I was curious to review the features of their app. App store reviews reflected an unhappy customer experience with key features of the app, particularly the Buy Again feature. By improving this area, I created an effective way for customers to purchase groups of their favorite items while also improving reorder efficiency.
Project Type
Concept Project
Role
Product Designer
Timeframe
2024 (2 months)
With ALDI’s plans to expand their store presence with 800 new stores through 2028, it’s important to create a customer centered and effective app experience in anticipation of their growing customer base.
RESEARCH
Identifying user pain points while reading critical reviews
Users found the app difficult to navigate and desired features that may improve the shopping experience. Reviews were consolidated into six major themes below.
"As an ALDI customer, I appreciate the brand's straight-forward approach to grocery shopping. I’m budget conscious and have limited time so saving time and money is top of mind for me."
The target customer is someone who is typically low income or middle class, value-conscious and seeks to save time given the limited selection of items to browse through.
feature prioritization
IDEATION
information architecture
I found the list view intuitive as well but because the goal was to design within ALDI’s design system, this piece of feedback was important in helping to justify the decision.
When editing your staples list, do you prefer to see the default all product view or a view of popular weekly staples?
This was surprising to see! I thought showing a view of popular staples could help the customer quickly narrow down what they were searching for. However, in most cases, the customer already knows what they’re shopping for.
DESIGN
I used Figma to build a prototype using hi-fidelity designs and used Maze to gather feedback from a group of six people through unmoderated test sessions. The test focused on three tasks, add a previously bought item to cart, editing weekly staples and adding staples to cart.
A header and modal bottom sheet were added to keep the task more focused and allow quick access to saving items
Proposed Solution a few quick taps from revisiting your previously bought items and favorite weekly staples
Below are final designs of this first round of iterations. I would love to continue testing to see the different ways this feature could be improved and ultimately provide an improved experience for the ALDI customer.
After
iMPACT
Encouraging early reads on time reduction and positive user feedback
defining success
Additional metrics to learn from
Although this was a concept project, I would love to use these metrics to further understand the impact from this design.
Gathering user feedback early and often was a defining part of my process
Time was my biggest constraint and it was challenging finding ALDI customers to talk to. However, gathering feedback from my test group was a crucial part of my process and was helpful in providing a direction for the initial concept. This helped me feel confident in the decisions I made which led to positive results during the first round of usability testing.
Given more time, I would love to speak to ALDI customers and test the second iteration of this design. I would love to see the direction this concept could go and ultimately, understand the impact the design could have on customers and the business.