ERIKA WANG

about

Carriers That Care

ERIKA WANG

about

Canada Post: Carriers that Care

Service design, experience design


Roles

Interaction Design
Interface Design
Product Strategy
Illustration

Team

Jasper Precilla
Samaila Newaz
Tristan Turisno
Hugo Duran

Duration

Oct 2023 - Dec 2023

OVERVIEW

How might we utilize the existing infrastructure of Canada Post to support socially isolated seniors?


Canada Post has, for the last 17 years, been seeing a decline in their profits as letter delivery becomes replaced by the internet, while faster, cheaper competitors such as UPS and FedEx have been growing their shares in the parcel delivery market.

On the other hand, they are in a unique position as a federal Crown corporation to deliver services to all communities across Canada. As underpinned in initiatives such as their introduction of 'community hub'-style post offices, they are increasing efforts in serving rural areas as part of their solution outside of their existing services in order to establish financial self-sustainability.

Carriers that Care is an expansion on an idea proposed by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers as one way to expand Canada Post's offerings.

PRELIMINARY RESEARCH

Why propose a check-in service?

INSIGHT #1

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers have been advocating for a senior check-in service since 2016.

The 'Delivering Community Power' initiative, created by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), are a set of proposals inspired by a sense of need for Canada Post to innovate - one of which include a proposal for a senior check-in service.

"Postal workers are already trusted and reliable members of our communities. Why not leverage tens of thousands of postal workers to provide further supports to seniors?"

- Canadian Union of Postal Workers (Source: Delivering Community Power: Our Plan - Elderly Check-ins)

INSIGHT #2

In the golden age of communications, seniors and their families still don't communicate everything.

Further investigation also revealed to us that children would move out and start families on their own, and while they would successfully stay in contact, sometimes, there were events that senior parents would not think to communicate as they did not think of them as significant.

"In the past year, Monique has encountered various 'problems' - a fall in the garden, a slip on the stairs. She describes them as if they were avoidable mistakes, the result of her absentmindedness."

- Description of a recipient of senior check-in service in France. (Source: The New Yorker)

DESIGN SPRINT - IDEATION

Finding a starting point

As a first step to the design process, my team & I held a 4-day design sprint that began with the goal of identifying how we could best translate the exisiting check-in models to a Canadian context.

The golden path exercise

During our design sprint, we did a variety of exercises, such as assumption mapping and HMW creation - amongst them, this was what I found was the most valuable. At this point in our design process, all team members saw different ways Carriers that Care could fail, but this exercise helped us gain mutual agreement on the most actionable problem space in our service.

This journey map allowed us to shape our next steps: HMW ensure a successful first-time visit to ensure trust in the service?

DESIGN SPRINT - INTERVIEWS

"Looks great, but it's not for me"

We created a landing page to communicate the values of the service and to establish trust amongst potential customers. We conducted a total of seven 30-40 minute user tests with people who lived independently from their parents. These candidates were from a varied age range between 20s to 50s. We then presented these to 7 users for feedback. This gave us insight into primary concerns that we should be addressing with our service.

Key concerns

During user testing and in-class presentations, proposals for Carriers that Care were met with concerns around putting postal workers in a position where they would have authority in areas that they would not be adequately trained for - especially medical care.

Would you sign your family up for this service?

Lack of trust in the carrier

"I'd rather trust a family member or a neighbour to check in, rather than a postman."

"I'll do it myself"

"I feel like i'd go visit myself, since I don't have a terrible relationship with parents."

Feels impersonal

"It just feels like I'd be asked, "Why won't my kids just call me instead?""

Stubbornness and rejecting care

"Would she want to give her info to some guy she doesn't know, especially when I don't know if it will be the same person each week?"

EMERGING THEMES FROM USER TESTS


DESIGN SPRINT RESULTS

Focusing the service on social isolation & loneliness

Our takeaway was that we focused too much on the tangible value that would be observed and sent to the families when designing the service. By making “reporting on senior wellbeing” the primary purpose of the service, users trusted the service less because it put the mail carrier in a position of authority without the necessary training of medical professionals.

Our next step from here was to do even more research into aging at home. The Canadian NIA, who supports the creation of a Canadian check-in program, provided a framework that helped us define what area of 'senior care' we could focus on reasonably.

Four fundamental pillars for enabling "Aging in the Right Place"

The core requirements of Carriers that Care are primarily designed around secondary research sourced from the National Institute of Ageing (NIA).

In particular, the scope of the service is based around their "Ageing in the Right Place" report, where they define 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. Carriers that Care is made with a focus on the fourth pillar, improving social connections to reduce loneliness and social isolation.

1. Promoting Preventive Health and Better Chronic Disease Management

2. Strengthening Home and Community Based Care & Supports for Unpaid Caregivers

3. Developing More Accessible and Safer Living Environments

4. Improving Social Connections to Reduce Loneliness and Social Isolation

This decision helped us define our final HMW:

FINAL SOLUTION

Introducing: Carriers that Care

In general, we imagine that a user's first interaction with Carriers That Care will be a three-step process, eventually simplifying into two steps as they get used to the routine of postal worker check-ins. The interfaces that were designed aim to encapsulate the digital touchpoints that would be involved in the service, on both the customer side and the employee side.

PHASE 1

Discovery, sign-up, and consent

This is where the user would need to learn about the service and potentially need to be able to share this information with the loved ones that they do not live with. We've designed the content of this page to push the social aspects of the service, while including elements such as options to mail brochures to loved ones as a means for a 'heads-up' that families may be interested in signing up.

Once both parties (the potential recipient of the service and their loved ones) are ready for sign-up, the Carriers That Care portal will require them to input information such as preferred dates for visits, contact details for both parties, and miscellaneous details to make visitations easier for postal workers.

The final screen of the sign-up process, providing details on how Canada Post will directly reach out to potential recipients of the service to receive vocal consent on beginning the service.

An example of what the service dashboard may look like before vocal consent is confirmed.

This sign-up process places emphasis on ensuring that the senior, who will be the recipient of the service, is aware of Carriers that Care and is consenting to receiving the service. Anticipating cases where families will be signing up on the senior's behalf, we have included callouts throughout the process, and will not begin delivery of the service until Canada Post receives vocal consent from the recipient.

The progress of this consent process will be visible through the dedicated Carriers that Care dashboard, which will be accessible through the web portal or through logging into Canada Post's website.

PHASE 2

Check-in and reporting

Once committed to the service, a postal worker will be assigned to conduct routine visits to the recipient's home. We felt that it was necessary to include an app in order to simplify the service process for carriers, while also making the service less dependent on the carrier's individual ability to report on seniors.



a. Filling out & Sending reports

To best accommodate postal workers who are constantly on the go, the report has been made to be as short-handed as possible: interactions will be primarily through button inputs, and text input prompts will be kept to a bare minimum of one field.

Placing limitations on reports

Most letter carriers will not have undergone the necessary training to be able to make observations pertaining to medical conditions.

To ensure that this services would be focused on social aspects, ideally, posties would only be able to report objective data, such as, for example, whether or not a senior has new bruises. Additionally, Canada Post would not be allowed to suggest actions.

b. Resources for unexpected events & emergencies

To alleviate pressure on postal carriers to be experts on handling risks that are outside of their expertise, these pages would allow them to maintain their focus on this service's core strategy, preventing social isolation.

PHASE 3

Receiving reports, facilitating further engagement

Each time a report is sent out by the letter carrier, both the recipient of the service and registered loved ones will be able to view them through their preferred medium or text or email. This will be a preview edition, containing a brief description from the carrier of how the visitation went. Full reports will be available only on the service dashboard; however, we have opted to avoid including direct links as to avoid confusion between fraudulent emails and Carriers that Care emails.

The dashboard will provide access to full reports once letter carriers start sending reports. At any point in the service, the customer also may feel the need to adjust their visitation plans, collect more information about their assigned letter carrier, or perhaps want to submit feedback to the service. We felt that a dashboard was necessary to ensure that customers can interact with the service as they see fit.

We also see the dashboard as an opportunity for Canada Post to connect Carriers That Care to other services in their ecosystem. One such proposal we had was the ability to have gifts hand-delivered by trusted posties through connecting our service to Canada Shops, an e-commerce store that was piloting during Fall of 2023.

Navigation from the Carriers that Care dashboard to Canada Shops.


Once a purchase is made on Canada Shops, the user may receive updates on the purchase alongside Carrier reports.

VALUE PROPOSITION



For the business

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. Utilizing their reach to approximately 17 million addresses across the country (Canada Post, 2021), Carriers that Care would introduce a new stream of revenue to the business.



For the customer

The Canadian National Institute of Aging suggests "Improving Social Connections to Reduce Loneliness and Social Isolation" as one of its recommendations for better enabling aging at home. Carriers that Care provides opportunity to foster consistent social engagement by providing a means for seniors to maintain relationships and social connections.