SendStation™ Tablet by Pitney Bowes
Pitney Bowes is a global technology company most known for its shipping solutions and e-commerce. It recently developed SendStation application that lets users easily manage their shipping from their office. In this way users can be confident their business is paying the correct postage and receiving the best discount on every parcel.
THE PROBLEM
SendStation is a revolutionary product in the logistics/courier industry. Ideally suited for Corporates, Exporters, Courier Service providers, Online Marketing companies, etc. Who has regular shipping and/or bulk shipping across the country (India, New Zealand, US) and abroad. It is the newest and simplest way to ship all of your packages through various carriers. Using this integrated cloud-based software, it's easy to send packages at the most attractive rates, the parcel is collected from your door by one of the friendly couriers and you are able to track your parcel online anytime to know your customers are receiving their parcel on time. It sounds great, right?
The business goal is oriented to enhanced user usage of the application for shipping labels. But the issue was most users do not know that SendStation exists. Or if they know that using the software was so confusing, they get frustrated and feeling lost while using the app.
TIMELINE
I joined to the team for 3 months of summer internship. The application was lunched on New Zealand and India about 6 months already and team had good amount of feedbacks to redesign the app based on them.
INTERESTING FACTS
Multitasking and working on the same application but specific features for different countries was so interesting for me. Also, this project was my first experience working with offshore teammates.
MY ROLE
Lead the UX Design and light the user research
Did the user experience design including creating wireframes
Create high fidelity prototype to show the full product experience
Collaborate with partners like HP to describe the design and needs
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
With feedbacks that was in hand after 6 months of actual experience of users, the path was almost clear bur for making sure, I did a heuristic evaluation and find out:
With the deal that SendStation offers for each shipping label, there should it is a great product to use
The status bar is missing and cause lots of difficulties
Introducing an app through some other related products might help the service to be known
PERSONA
The persona in the stage that I joined the team was made already and I just added some pain points based on recent feedbacks.
Meet Ahmed!
Ahmed is 35 years old and as an online seller, he runs a small business in India. He sells a variety of accessories that are small and low weighted, the price of them also are reasonable so he receiving lots of orders during a month. Wednesdays are his day to go to the post office to send out the parcels.
His goals are:
Reduce her waiting time at the post office so he goes there usually early mornings
An affordable and safe way of shipping
Receiving good reviews about the delivery time, packaging, and products that he sells
He is frustrated of:
Going to the post office just once a week because affect her reviews on Amazon about the time of delivery
Paying a lot for small packages to speed up the delivery process
Wasting too much time in the post office to make sure he is all set
DESIGN SOLUTIONS
The design decisions include 3 critical changes that affect seriously the product.
Status Bar
Adding the introduction to the app
Collaboration with HP and Samsung (In India) with Amazon and eBay (In the US and New Zealand)
Status Bar
Adding the status bar was one of the initial decisions that I made. After categorizing the steps and doing the information architecture asked the developers to follow the wireframe and add it to the application. Since it was some changes that were added very soon I was able to see the result before my internship came over and as I anticipated the effect was obvious after implementation.
Adding the introduction to the app
The introduction is a necessary feature that users can follow in the first visit of the application and come back to it later if they want. The feature designed as pop-up boxes to show the user how to interact with the app also they are able to skip it if they want. Later if they want to come back and see if they can find it under “Help“. These features also developed into the app and was a benefit for users.
Collaboration with HP and Samsung (In India) with Amazon and eBay (In New Zealand and India)
To introduce the application to the user the idea of implementing the app into the HP and Samsung printers was something that my manager was so happy with. We started to discuss the options and possibilities and find out it is possible to start with Samsung printers on the specific model and include the app through the printer and start marketing campaigns based on the new collaboration in India. It is now available and running in India.
Working with Amazon and eBay as a collaborator and link the seller profile to the SendStation was a big step that we had and helped a lot of sellers in New Zealand and soon the US.
At the end of the internship, I ended up with a high-fidelity prototype and lots of implementation through the actual app that is accessible through Google Play plus through all the possibility of special packages that designed specifically for SendStation and replicate the experience decision that I made during 3 months of my internship.
LESSON LEARNED
Working in a multi-national culture with offshore teammates was a great experience for me as a start of expertise in the industry. I had to think out of the box for a product that lightens a lot of new ideas for me in learning UX in action. Working closely with developers showed me how to ease the way for both sides of design and development. Thanks to Pitney Bowes for the great opportunity!