India Post — A Case Study

Upgrading India Post. Improving Postal service for millions of Indians.

Keshav Gugnani
Nov 1 · 7 min read

Overview

India Post is a government-operated postal system, founded in 1854, generally called “The Post Office” in India, which is the most widely distributed postal system in the world serving millions of people every day.

Despite having one of the oldest and widest networks of India, people are not satisfied with the services of India Post as it has partially failed to deliver and meet the needs of the time.

The Prompt

Using the service of India Post is as same as it was 20 years ago, people find it challenging these days, as it has not been upgraded in terms of its methods technology and service. The prompt is to design a flawless experience for users with a goal of making it less time consuming, easily accessible and fast service.

Design Process/strategy

Double Diamond Service Design Process

The timeline:

Day 0: Started thinking about it when it took me a whole day to send a parcel to my friend through India Post.

Day 1: Overview. Understanding the service and various facts about it. Reading tweets related to #India Post

Day 2: Empathise. Visiting nearby Post offices, meeting people, customers, the postman and understanding their need and pain.

Day 3: Define. Analyzing it, Connecting the dots, tracing the patterns and defining the problem statement.

Day 4: Develop. Ideation process, using our insights. Information Architecture.

Day 5 and 6: Deliver. Prototyping, designing the user’s desired journey.

Discover

Target Audience

In an era, where using facilities like G-mail, WhatsApp and Amazon are as easy and as quick as breathing, what really makes me think that who are those people and why are they still using postal services like India Post?

They are people living in Tier 2 & 3 cities.

A Qualitative analysis

To start off this project I went to a few Post Offices in Jaipur and talked to the people who came there to use India Post to get a better understanding of their experience and the process they have to go through it ever time.

A visit to Pratap Nagar Post office, Jaipur.

The Questionnaire

  • What is your purpose of using India Post Service?
  • How frequently do you use this service?
  • How do you get to know the pricing of a specific parcel?
  • Do you always come to the post office on your own or you send someone for this task?
  • How do you find the transit time for a parcel? Do you ask the post office people? Any other method?
  • Have you ever faced a situation where you want to send a parcel/ letter but the post office is closed and you can not wait the next day? What did you do in that situation?
  • Do you know there are other platforms of India post that are available 24/7?
  • Have you ever tried to send any international mail/parcel via India post? if yes, what problems did you face?
  • How much time did you need to send your parcel/letter?

The results

  • Users don’t get to know about the pricing of their parcel until they go and ask their nearby post office.
  • 6 out of 12 people use India Post services once a month.
  • It generally takes 30 mins to send a parcel through India Post.
  • Users don’t get to know about the transit time their consignment will take to reach its destination before the booking. They always have to ask the India Post officer.
  • In an emergency situation, where unfortunately users find the India Post office close, they don’t know about the various booking facilities of India Post that are available 24/7. Ex: Railway Mail Service, India Post Head Office and etc.
  • 6 out of 12 users need 30 mins to 1 hour to send their consignment through India Post.

Personas

After meeting 12 users, I was able to make User Personas based on the insights.

Scenarios

  • A Student who feels frustrated about getting admission in college needs to buy admission forms, fill it and mail it but faces availability of forms and mailing facility don’t share a common platform.
  • A Chartered Accountant who feels dissatisfied about tracking his parcel needs to open web portal and put parcel number every time finds it a boring and time taking process.
  • A Businessman who feels frustrated about exporting his consignments needs to go to India Post office and book one every time but faces it is a time taking and costly process.

Define

“A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem.” — Sir Don Norman

Problems that the user faces

  • Users don’t get to the exact price of the parcel unless they go to the post office.
  • Users don't have any way to know about the nearby offices of India Post as there are some 24/7 available services.
  • Users don’t have any way to know about the transit time any parcel will take unless they ask from the post office.
  • Going to the post office for any consignment every time is a time taking process.
  • In the case of speed post, entering the required information manually is a tough and time-consuming process.

Develop

Ideation

The idea is to enhance user experience through an interactive mobile application which majorly includes the following:

  1. Pre-order of consignment
    The pre-order facility will give the user a power in his/her hands to use the India Post service without even going to the post office.
  2. Tracking of consignment
    The user will be able to track the consignment from the booking until its delivery. Services like Amazon and Flipkart are already giving this facility to their users. Incorporating such feature will be an extension to the user’s capability.
  3. Calculate the fare
    Without knowing the price, going to post office is an embarrassment in itself. This will give the user a precise idea about the price he/she needs to pay to the India Post for his/her consignment.
  4. Transit time of consignment
    Most people feel unsatisfied as they have no idea when their consignment will reach its destination. Letting the user know about the time it will be going to take for that consignment will make the user satisfied and make him/her feel more enlightened.
  5. Nearby service of India Post
    In our research, as we found out that many people don’t even know the nearby platforms from where can use the India Post services if required. The user should know about the nearby locations and timings of these offices.
  6. Less error in the filling of information
    Giving required information to the India Post officer by filling it manually or was need of that time but not anymore. Now it's important to upgrade the methods used so far. It will also reduce the errors that happen in reading or writing manually.

Colour Palette

Typography

Roboto has a dual nature. It has a mechanical skeleton and the forms are largely geometric. At the same time, the font features friendly and open curves. While some grotesks distorts their letterforms to force a rigid rhythm.
Roboto doesn’t compromise, allowing letters to be seated into their natural width.

This makes for a more natural reading rhythm more commonly found in humanist and serif types.

Information Architecture

Deliver

Wireframes

The Product

Future ideas to generate revenue and improve the user experience

The India Post can make available of:

  1. All kinds of envelopes that may be required to send any kind of consignment.
  2. All kinds of documents required for any purpose related to Govt. of India, like admission forms, etc.

Review

This project is entirely on the conceptual stage and has not been tested anywhere. It would be great to listen from you and to get your valuable feedback. Please feel free to share.

Thanks for reading!

I am @keshavgugnani on Twitter.
You can always contact me on my email: gugnani.keshav@gmail.com
I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback.