Mijn gezonde profiel

A personalized feature within the Albert Heijn app that helps customers make healthier food choices by offering tailored suggestions, interactive content, and smart tools integrated throughout their shopping journey.

Problem

Users find it difficult to make healthy food choices due to a lack of guidance, visibility, and support in their everyday shopping experience.

Solution

Mijn Gezonde Profiel improves the Albert Heijn app by offering personalized content and interactive tools that guide users toward healthier food choices within their shopping journey.

After my internship, I got the opportunity to work on my graduation project at Albert Heijn.
This involved me working on the following design challenge:

"How can Albert Heijn support its customers through a digital solution in choosing healthier food and creating a healthier food environment?"

Context

We live in a world that constantly tempts us to make unhealthy food choices, while individuals are expected to stay motivated and choose the healthier option. But making healthy choices isn't always easy, even when people are aware of the importance of a good diet. Unhealthy eating contributes to over 8 percent of the disease burden and leads to around €6 billion in healthcare costs every year (Van Der Aa, 2023).This project focused on how Albert Heijn could play a more active role in helping customers eat healthier, using its digital platform.

What is a healthy food environment?

A healthy food environment is one where nutritious food is easy to access and where people are supported with information about what’s healthy and how to prepare healthy meals. The goal is to make healthy choices easier and more visible in everyday life.

Research

To understand how AH could support its customers, I started by learning about their needs, habits, and struggles. I conducted interviews and set up surveys to gather insights.These insights were turned into a persona, which helped keep the user in mind throughout the design process.

Try-outs that didn’t make it

‘My inspiration’ was a concept which would give the user personalised content based on their interests and goals. For example, what are their favourite cuisines, what is their family composition and what is their healthy goal? Why this concept hadn't made it in the end is because it lost the overarching theme of ‘healthy eating’. Now it was just a part of it.

End result

After working on this project for many weeks and thoroughly researching the target audience and existing apps. A solution was developed that meets the defined requirements and helps the customer make healthier food choices within the AH app. This solution ultimately answers the following question: How can AH support its customers through a digital solution in choosing healthier food and creating a healthier food environment? ‘Mijn gezonde profiel’ answers this question by helping customers make healthier food choices. This is done through personalised suggestions that customers can easily integrate into their own lives. By linking their purchases to their profile in the app, users are guided and encouraged to take steps towards healthier choices. In addition, information on healthy eating is made more accessible by offering different ways of content. Such as stories, blogs and quizzes. Thus, ‘My healthy profile’ contributes to the pursuit of a healthier food environment.

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Quote from customer:

‘I would really love this, and especially the goal less sugar too. Then I think I would start using it. I'm aware that we eat way too many sugars. And it's hard to see what contains sugar and what quantity and which products just don't have it. I would think that would be a really good one’

Feedback from UX mentor at Albert Heijn

‘I think overall it is very valuable in supporting healthier food choices. The foundation is the healthy profile, where customers can access personally relevant content. But also especially very valuable are the components incorporated in other places in the app & in the current (shopping) journey: so particularly the quiz that gets the information about healthier food to the customer in an easy and interactive way. And in addition, the ‘switches’ while searching products & in my list. I think you have taken a good look at the frustrations, wants & needs of customers and answered them appropriately.The prototype is super complete and well worked out in detail, it is well put together. You have also made quite a few iterations on this in the past period and you have also challenged yourself in this with, for example, those ‘switches’, which were not very easy to prototype. You should be proud of that! Very cool and valuable what you have achieved! And in addition, great how flexible you were in the process, how you talked a lot with stakeholders & customers and how you dealt with feedback to get to this result.’

Roos Horselenberg.