Albertsons

Another project I worked extensively on was FreshPass. This was a new program to offer a premium version of Albertsons brand shopping to customers, starting with lower delivery fees and including a variety of other benefits such as faster delivery, discounts, special discount days, and other benefits. When I started, there was some beautiful video on food but no concrete information on what benefits this program offers or how to sign up. When I was finished, it was extremely clear what the benefits are, what the program options are, and how to sign up.

At Albertsons, there was a mix of initiatives from different managers, and also self initiated projects based on improvements I felt could be made to the user experience. The process was fairly simple: I would take inventory of the app or web user experience as it was, perform competitive research on close competitors such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, Instacart, and so on, sketch a variety of user flow concepts, then design a few variations for a proposal for a new user experience for our own app. While in Figma, I’d usually come up with many variations that can be between 3 and 20 different variations on details. 

Next, I will present the outline of this process to our stakeholders with my proposed #1 and maybe also #2 concepts, and allow discussion or feedback. Sometimes, I will refer to earlier iterations and why those were not chosen, in case someone suggests an idea I already tried - whereupon I can demonstrate why that solution has issues. If there is any new need that comes up during this discussion, I will take note of it and add it to future iterations. At this point depending on whether or not it is in a state to progress to development stage, we may go ahead and start developing this feature with the current mocks while we iterate on future improvements based on feedback, or if the feedback blocks development we will quickly mock up the new experience incorporating the feedback and then proceed to development. 

The design team also met regularly to discuss project updates and the design system. I was a regular contributor at these events, adding feedback and presenting my own designs. Additionally, I contributed to the evolving design system and shared components such as designing detailed text variations in the receipt in checkout. These additions required cross-functional collaboration and sign off to ensure that all stakeholders had their concerns and needs met, as well as aligning with the design vision. For example, in the checkout experience there may be different text treatments in the summary section depending on the circumstance. Font size, weight, color, background, layout, etc. all had to be considered for every variation, in collaboration with both design and non-design departments. Once the variations were designed and approved for every use & edge case they were coded into the design system and engineering implementation.

Next, I made the Rewards significantly easier to redeem by having a shopping experience for using Rewards. In the loyalty section, doubling as My Account, users can see a shopping grid of products that are eligible for free or discounted checkout. They would also be able to tap into a new screen that would be a full screen experience showing the Rewards they could redeem for different point values, e.g. 1 Reward, 2 Rewards, 3 Rewards. The discounted or free items grew in value corresponding to how many Rewards it takes to redeem them.

On the premium side of Albertsons, I contributed to major improvements in the FreshPass program. Previously, benefits were unclear and sign up options were few and far between. So, I designed a clear landing page that showed a card for each benefit, each with clear typographic and illustrative treatment. For example, a large card is shown with “customers saved $425 per year on average with this program” and other benefits are shown here in an attractive and informative manner. 

Secondly I designed the sign-up experience and accounted for detailed interaction design where users select their subscription plan and payment form. This required collaborating with different departments such as checkout to ensure that we were using the same design vision and working together to make it as easy to use as possible.

Another major initiative was combining a FreshPass upsell experience into the checkout flow. Normally when users order delivery they would select a time from an available table of times. I designed an experience where users would see the faster and free delivery fee times they could have if they had FreshPass, and selecting this would allow them to add FreshPass to their order, or buy it separately before proceeding to finish their order checkout.

I also improved the FreshPass signup experience by adding a one-click to add to cart experience. In the final stage of checking out, users who would receive a discount on their order could have the option of signing up for FreshPass monthly by checking a checkbox. Next to this checkbox was text summarizing that their total for this order would be reduced by adding a FreshPass subscription to this order. When they complete checkout, they get their order and also a subscription to FreshPass simultaneously. This sort of clear treatment for adding FreshPass would contribute significantly to subscription growth.

Loyalty programs are proven to increase business annual revenue by 15-25%. Because Albertsons revenue in Jan 2025 was measured at 79.93B, if loyalty were even a 1% factor in overall sales, that would put the impact of loyalty well over 100M per year.