Taste Profile

Designing a personalised taste profile for a loyalty-based mobile app.

The Overview

As part of a broader initiative to enhance a retailer’s digital loyalty experience, I led the discovery and experience strategy for a personalised taste profile feature within a member app. The aim was to shift perception from price-based loyalty to emotional engagement by visualising customer taste profiles—based on purchases, reviews, and interactions—to create a unique, identity-driven experience. I collaborated with product, data, and marketing teams to explore opportunities for deeper engagement, education, and connection beyond discounts.

Role: UX Designer – Experience Strategy, Concept Exploration, User Testing

Year: 2023-2024

Client: Confidential

Platform: App

The Business Goals

The organisation aimed to:

  • Move beyond price-driven loyalty by fostering invested loyalty built on trust, personalisation, and engagement.

  • Build a mobile-first experience that helps members discover new products aligned to their preferences.

  • Strengthen emotional connection and brand affinity among key audience segments (e.g., premium and next-gen customers).

  • Increase the frequency and depth of member engagement with app experiences beyond transactional shopping.

The Problem

The loyalty app had a high member volume but was underleveraged as a tool for deeper customer connection. Most members only used the app for member pricing, missing opportunities to create a living, evolving representation of their taste and identity.

Key questions we explored included:

  • How might we create an engaging experience in the app to provide value to members and create loyalty?

  • How might we create an opportunity for enjoyment and engagement?

  • How might we make MilZ feel confident in their discovery journey?

  • How might we create an experience for MilZ to learn and discover in their browsing and purchasing journey that is fun, engaging and informative?

The Discovery Process

  • Stakeholder workshops (e.g., with product teams, PIM team and marketing).

  • Interview drinks specialists to gather insights on customer taste preferences, purchase motivation and drinks knowledge.

  • Competitive analysis: other liquor, music, perfume or food preference profiles.

  • Data exploration: purchase history, reviews, likes/dislikes, product data, customer data, and segment sales analytics.

  • Understanding the characteristics and attributes of different types of drinks.

  • Data usage and privacy: customers wanted to understand how data was used and curated.

  • Defining our Customers workshop

  • Interview with Drinks Specialists

  • A snapshot of the interview synthesis

  • Competitor and Market Research

  • Data Discovery - Supporting BA
    Description goes here

The Concept Design & Experience Flow

  • Sketches or wireframes of the taste profile

  • Experience the flow of how preferences build over time (progressive disclosure)

  • Examples of interactions: building and viewing a personalised taste profile, getting recommendations

  • Concept testing with drinks specialists

Key Insights

Drinks specialists believe that the product will appeal more to the younger demographic as their taste palette is developing. They are keen to learn and explore, and they have higher online interaction.

Data privacy and control were considered important by the customers as they wanted to understand how data was used.

Taste profile will help drinks specialists in-store to understand customers' taste palettes straight away, making it easier for them to provide recommendations.

The Outcome

Even though this project didn’t proceed due to business reprioritisation:

  • The concept tested well in early research and aligned with broader loyalty and digital strategy.

  • Helped validate customers' desire for a deeper, personalised experience when shopping for alcohol.

  • Enhanced the connection between the in-store and online shopping experience.