When we have to send a letter or parcel at the post office it is seen as an ordeal.
Introduction
Today we sent more emails than letters with the revolution of internet and the creation of hotmail, gmail… Emails are sent quickly around the world and people get them instantly. Even I send more emails than writing letter now but I remembered as a kid I enjoyed writing postal cards to my friends and told them about my vacations.
“Letters are among the most signifiant memorial a person can behind them” Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Now we are mainly going to the post office to return our e-commerce packages or send important documents.
I don’t know about you but in France, it’s a challenge to mail a letter because one it’s the only establishment, two the queue and three the self automated machines. Two first points are recurrent in other shops but the last one make me wasting time.
Challenge
Some of La Poste’s offices are trying to improve the usability and desirability of these machines. First is to assess the current state of things, to understand how people are currently using the automats, to understand what are their expectations and frustrations. And then answer the issues raised by the users during observations and the users’ interviews.
Research
With my team (Lisa and Pierre-Etienne), we decided to observe the users at a post office and understand “how are they reacting on the machine” and “where are the issues” and interview them.
Before going to the post office my team and I wrote an interview guide, here some questions:
What do you think of the location of the equipment?
What do you think of the time spent on the machine?
Did you have to go back to a previous page during operation?
Did you need any help?
After we interviewed 5 persons and did 8 observations with people around twenty to seventy years old, we first transcribed our notes in order to understand the users frustrations and expectations. Then we used sticky notes to write all the issues and quotes from the users.
5 main usability issues found:
- Payment options : no option for contactless payment or credit/cash payment on some machines
- Timeout screen : stressful and unclear, cancel everything
- Money and stamps recovery : not ergonomic
- Bugs : Keyboards worked half the time, slow machine and problems with credit card reading.
- Obstruction : many intrusive screens impeding the final payment, we examined backsliding, hesitations, cancellations and sometimes needs for assistance. (Users forced to click three times to get rid of undesired screens and suggestions, this wastes 18 useless seconds and takes 50% of the total duration)
Dot voting
Dot voting is a simple tool used to democratically prioritize items or make decisions in a group setting. It is an easy, straightforward way to narrow down alternatives and converge to a set of concepts or ideas. With my team, we unanimously choose on two ideas as you can see on the picture below.
Problem statement
This is our problem statement
All users encounter obstructions from the payment phase, such as systematic pop-up window and in some cases insertion of an additional intrusive screen followed by an unnecessary repetition of payment validation request. These obstructions raise doubts, slow action, cause backsliding, cancellations or even provoke the need for human assistance.
How to make the payment phase quicker, simpler, and less confusing ?
We also did a crazy 8, in 8 minutes each find 8 ideas, do it 3 times to have as much ideas as possible for the prototype.
Prototype
We build a low fi prototype machine and interface.
We delete all the pop up screens and put new options for ease of use, there is a new basket section so users can view their purchasing, with this new design speed and smoothness.
Sometimes old people need assistance so we decided to put a diode like a supermarket checkout, like that if they need help they just click on a help button and red light will illuminate and a post office employee will come as soon as possible.
Conclusion
The global user experience is unpleasant because of the cold environment and the lack of human service but on the contrary people appreciates the human contact and help very much because this is the only company everybody knows they know they have nothing to look forward to.
It was a good project to work with my team, we know we make it even better if we want to improve the machine.
Thanks for reading!
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