User Experience Design for Deutsche Post
This project was aimed at designing user experience for Deutsche post/DHL by moving beyond the traditional postal experience. We undertook extensive User Research & Surveys (Qualitative & Quantitative), worked on various touch-points of the user’s journey, mapping pain-points and needs with the aim of converting majority of physical experience to a seamless digital experience.
I was involved in the end to end process. Going around town asking people about their experience with Deutsche Post to begin with.
Please find more details on the process below.
Body storming design thinking
Started with Research, Research & more Research with research methodologies- inclusive intuition & narrative enquiry with people in Berlin. I went to post-offices, spaetis, and pack-stations and asked people questions about their postal experience. I also planned a really interesting research methodology called Body-storming. We enacted the entire process of sending a parcel right from sending a box to receiving it.
Moving on to the next diamond
For further research, I organised a design workshop. I planned the workshop with fun and creative design processes. The participants had to find ideas for “the future of the postal services”. They all came from different parts of the world including Asia, Europe, Canada & Africa, hence bringing in their own native experiences with postal services. This gave us really amazing insights on what the people are most are used to and are most concerned about.
One of the interesting insights that came out from the workshop was that people are really concerned about Sustainability. They saw the disposal of parcel boxes as one of the most serious problems. This was definitely something that I did not discover during the primary research. Incorporated that into our proposed product strategy and focussed on innovating the current pack-stations, finding recycle options for the used boxes and integrating everything into a digital mailbox (Deutsche Post app).
Collected all the ideas and evaluated them on - Quick wins, Major projects, Fill-ins & Thankless tasks. Further dividing them into digital & physical parts.
Digital Mailbox planning
Notes from strategy planning
Planning the vending machine function
Evaluated and surveyed options that could be added to a pack-station. The research showed that acquiring and disposing material was one of the top concerns of our customers. Hence, the proposed solution was adding a vending machine & a recycling slot to the pack-station making it a “one stop shop” for buying the material, sending & receiving the package and also disposing the empty boxes.
Another solution was to add value to the mobile app. This led to the idea of converting it into a Digital Mailbox, where the customers can store all their invoices they get from Deutsche Post. Then also making it possible to make payments for the same. Below are a few sketches and notes from the ideation process.
Then, we mapped the customer journey with the proposed product strategies, that increased the level of atomisation for the entire process to almost 80%, from the previous 40%.
