End-to-end service design for Canada Post; recognized internationally
Carriers that Care leverages the existing Canada Post network to deliver in-person check-ins to seniors living alone. It’s designed to pilot in high-trust rural neighbourhoods in Canada, with plans to scale services to wider areas.
Academic Project for IAT438: Experience Design; Collaborators: Jasper Precilla, Samaila Newaz, Tristan Turisno, Hugo Duran
CONTEXT
With the rise of digital alternatives, revenue from letter delivery has been on the decline for the past 17 years, and in parcel delivery, Canada Post been losing market share to faster, cheaper competitors such as FedEx or UPS.
How might we use Canada Post’s existing network to propose an experience design solution that innovates their brand image?
WEEK ONE
Preliminary Research
The first week of our project was spent convincing people that Canada Post had a problem, and that our project would work. Looking into the background of Canada Post, we were lucky in that since our chosen company was a national postal service, a LOT of stakeholders were invovled, which meant that lots of people had proposed ideas in the past that never quite made it to fruition.
Global Competitor Research
Once we were able to prove demand for a senior check-in service, our next step was to prove that our proposal was feasible. Luckily, postal services in countries such as Japan and France already have successfully operating services, which we were able to reference as evidence.
WEEK TWO
Prototyping and user testing
Because we had example models to base our service off of, my team was able to create a prototype quickly and bring it to testing fairly quickly, which I felt was crucial for this project, which came with a lot of uncertainties. In the span of a week, our team created a mock landing page and got potential users to ‘sign up’ for the service.
7 participants -
Those who live separately from their parents
20 - 50 years old
30-40 minutes / session
Synthesizing feedback
This project came with a lot of confusion and concern, primarily around the area of trust and concern around seniors being checked-in on. Below are a few of the concerns that were voiced during user testing:
WEEK THREE
Addressing user concerns
Secondary research sourced from the National Institute of Ageing (NIA) - particularly, their "Ageing in the Right Place" report, defines four fundamental pillars that are essential in enabling older adults to age in the most appropriate setting where their personal preferences, circumstances, and care needs are met.
Following user interviews, we conducted further research into "aging at home", hoping to find an area that postal workers could comfortably intervene in.
This framework helped my team and I scope down our service focus to the fourth pillar, improving social connections to reduce loneliness and social isolation. I felt that this focus would be essential in keeping the trust of Carriers that Care, as I feel that postal workers would not have the capacity to reasonably support the other three pillars without fundamental changes to their jobs.
WEEK FOUR
Polishing the prototype - What does a “senior check-in” look like?
OVERVIEW OF THE PROCESS
1. SIGN-UPS
Canadians who live away from their senior family members can sign their loved ones up for Carriers that Care.
2. CHECK IN
Deliverymen of Canada Post, who already have the widest delivery route reach out of any delivery service in Canada, will make routine visits to senior members who have been registered.
3. FOLLOW UP
Following each visit, pre-designed reports describing each check-in will be filled out by the deliverymen and sent to families of the seniors.
REFLECTION
With a deadline of 5 weeks, this project was truly a hustle. Yet, because I was surrounded by fellow designers who had such diverse skill sets, I really really enjoyed getting to immerse myself in design research and synthesis - a whole service design project in this time scope was only possible because we truly became masters of ‘divide and conquer’. I truly believe design cannot be created in a silo, so getting to nurture a project from end to end with fellow empathetic, design-minded peers is an experience I dearly miss.
Also, if this means anything to you - the teaching team (prof. Russell Taylor!!) for this course included this project in their course briefs in the semesters following mine. That’s pretty cool!