Bringing your favorite eccentric products to your fingertips
Making grocery shopping accessible for college students
Industry: Retail
May 2024 - November 2024
My Role: UI/UX Designer | User Research | Visual Design
Tools: Figma
Timeline:
What is Trader Joes?
Trader Joe’s is a beloved grocery store chain known for affordable, high-quality products and a welcoming, community-focused vibe. With unique offerings like podcasts, recipes, and newsletters, it goes beyond groceries to connect with customers in creative ways.
Despite its unique offerings, the company lacks a mobile app, limiting accessibility and modern engagement with its customers.
This led us to our problem...
Defining the Problem
We saw an opportunity to improve Trader Joe’s customer experience by addressing a key gap: the lack of a mobile app. This missing tool leaves valuable resources underutilized and limits engagement, making it a clear problem to solve.​
How can we create a modern, streamlined experience that increases awareness and accessibility of Trader Joe’s unique offerings—like podcasts, recipes, and newsletters—and helps connect users with the brand in a more natural and intuitive way?
Our Goal
Highlight Trader Joe’s unique resources in a way that feels effortless and inviting​
Reflect the brand's warm, laid-back, and community-driven spirit
Create an experience that is intuitive, purposeful, and enjoyable​
Competitive Analysis + SWOT Analysis
We brainstormed key features like shopping lists, recipes, dietary filters, and community engagement to align with Trader Joe’s brand and create a user-friendly app.
I turned our insights into a structured market research table, refining ideas to create an innovative, user-centric app for Trader Joe’s.
Feature | Vons | Safeway | Ralphs | Urban Outfitters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purpose | Share time-limited content through your day | Organize and group favorite TikToks into themed collections | Share short-loved, personal content with friends | |
Key features | 24-hour disappearing stories, filters, Bitmoji | Pinning content to page, saved videos | 24-hour stories, reactions, comments | |
Collaboration | Private stories where you can add select friends | N/A | Shared stories for groups | |
User Interface | Dynamic filters and interactive elements | Minimalist | Simple but outdated | |
Usability | High --- intuitive, swipe-based interaction | Moderate, swipe-based interaction | Moderate, basic but functional | |
Demographic of Users | Younger audiences/Gen Z, closer-knit circles | Gen Z, content creators and consumers | Older users, parents and family, local communities |
User Research
Our first user research survey consisted of 27 respondents from UCSD-enrolled students to gauge their experience with grocery shopping at Trader Joes versus other stores.
The students had spoken...
100%
of students view grocery shopping as a time consuming concept
86%
of students want to know what's in stock before shopping in-person
72%
of students have access to a car regularly
70%
of students have a difficulty knowing what to buy at the store
Quotes from our interviewees...
"I sometimes find it hard to find things in trader joes, so if i also had an app that tells me where the things that I am looking for are that would be lit"
"My life as a college student would become easier as I would be able to deliver my favorite trader joes groceries to my door"
"Trader Joe’s always has interesting new foods and snacks that sometimes i don’t see or know is there but if there was an app you could see what’s new"
3 main pain points
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Time-Consuming Shopping – Grocery shopping feels tedious, and users want a faster, more efficient way to plan and shop.
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Lack of Accessibility & Convenience – Many struggle with in-store shopping due to limited transportation and the inability to check stock availability beforehand.
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Difficulty in Decision-Making – Users often don’t know what to buy and need better product discovery and recommendations.
The Solution!
Due to accessibility challenges and time-consuming grocery trips, we focused on delivery as the core feature of our app. This allows users to shop conveniently and have groceries delivered to their door, solving transportation barriers. To enhance engagement, we also integrated Trader Joe’s unique offerings, such as recipes and podcasts, into the app’s navigation, creating an intuitive and seamless experience.
Development
Step 1: Wireframing
Shopping List to Checkout Flow
Users start with the shopping list to organize groceries, then move to checkout, choosing delivery or pickup. This streamlines shopping, tackling time constraints and accessibility challenges.
Product Page to Stock + Item Flow
The product discovery page helps users explore new items, leading to a detailed product page with pricing, stock availability. This simplifies decision-making before shopping.
Podcast List to Listening Page Flow
Users browse Trader Joe’s podcasts through a categorized list. Selecting an episode opens a player, letting them listen while shopping or cooking, strengthening brand engagement beyond groceries.
Changes !
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Add nutritional info about users' favorite products
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Design the navigation bar to be less icon centered and to follow the unique icons of Trader Joes
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Change the Product Page to be a Landing Page
Final Designs
