ROLE
Researching, Ideating, Designing, Prototyping, Validating
TOOLS
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Xd & Sketch
TIME
2018
PostNL employees use a terminal every day to frank and send packages. This process must be quick and efficient. What improvements should be made to the current design to create a better customer experience, prevent errors and speed up the process?
PROBLEM
Using a terminal to frank and send packages needs to be fast and efficient. But according to PostNL there were some issues with the terminal. Some elements were unclear and it did not work fast enough. PostNL already created a redesign, but these designs also needed some improvements.
SOLUTION
I redesigned some elements. This system works faster because it uses autocompletion in search fields, has consistent buttons, prevents errors from happening, provides the user with feedback throughout the process and is easily adjustable.
RESEARCH
My team and I started out by exploring the terminal, so we could develop our own mental model and create a good understanding of the system. Afterwards, I mapped the tasks in a flowchart to look back at later and see what tasks slowed the process down and needed to be improved. When we created a pretty good understanding of the system, we started observing the users and asked them for a small interview about their experience with the terminal. With this information, I created an empathy map and user journey, and bundled all my findings in an affinity map.
Customer Journey
VALIDATION
Finally, I tested my solutions with peers and postNL employees with the use of eye tracking software and A/B testing. The first group were given the tasks where the postal code was real, and the other group the tasks in which there was a mistake in the postal code, so they would receive an error message. In both cases, the users understood what they had to do. In case of the error message group, they were able to easily adjust the input.
One thing eye tracking showed me was that changing the keyboards from numeric to QWERTY based on the input slowed the process down a bit. The eyes most likely needed to adjust to the changes. This means, that I probably should have left the keyboards in place and faded one out that was not valuable to the input.
One thing eye tracking showed me was that changing the keyboards from numeric to QWERTY based on the input slowed the process down a bit. The eyes most likely needed to adjust to the changes. This means, that I probably should have left the keyboards in place and faded one out that was not valuable to the input.
CONCLUSION
So, how can the experience of using the postNL terminal be optimized for the people working with it?
It can be optimized by speeding up the process with automatic steps, keep elements consistent, so it cannot cause confusion, prevent errors by providing enough feedback, showing only relevant elements, and make input easily adjustable. Especially, the feedback point is very valuable for both the inexperienced user and the experienced user.
It can be optimized by speeding up the process with automatic steps, keep elements consistent, so it cannot cause confusion, prevent errors by providing enough feedback, showing only relevant elements, and make input easily adjustable. Especially, the feedback point is very valuable for both the inexperienced user and the experienced user.
REFLECTION
While testing the old system, I did not measure how much time users spend to complete a task. If I had done that, and afterward measured the time users spend on a task with my redesigned system, I could have really proved my concept. This was a learning moment and I would definitely not forget this next time.
