SMIOTA

A central off-site mailroom is needed to intake and then distribute packages to employees in multiple buildings or across campus. In this case we want one of the most prestigious social media company to come onboard.

User research was quintessential, in order to understand the user needs better. Various research methods were used which helped us with great insights to make smooth and hassle free user experience for the users.

• Discussion with team mates

  I started my first step of research by understanding different ways Smiota was serving its customers​. In the end of gaining my knowledge right on the product I ended up finding 6 'configuration types' that Smiota was supporting with other bunch of smaller customization tailored to each client. For this redesign, our purpose was to focus on the overall large scale business configuration.

• Onsite Visit

  Our team visited our client’s mailroom warehouse to understand their pain points further which gave us a detailed insights and helped us in redesigning our application. All the details and the use cases were observed during the interaction with the staff members. The onsite visit was basically to understand the 'Arrival' to 'Delivery' needs of the user and the current flow which mailroom staff uses. 
  
  In order to prepare for our onsite visit, we roughly prepared a set of questions which needed clarifications and were of prime importance in order to understand the overall needs for designing new solution.

Based on all the information we gathered after interacting with the mailroom staff, below are the major PAIN POINTS and KEY FINDINGS from our research process as follows:
 

• Our client was looking for a replacement of BearTracks system (BT)(one of our competitors) because of the poor user interface, and support from BT folks.

• User Interface issues include

  • Unnecessary features clutter up the UI and they are not used by the mailroom staff at all​

  • Drop down does not have a search function which makes them browse 10s of items and results in inefficient usage of associates's time

  • Due to lack of features in BT system, they use their internal task system for managing part of their delivery process

  • System is unresponsive at times, specially when receiving the packages for the first time using hand held devices  

• Users move a lot between building and locations (remote workers travelling to the location, and ordering iphones to take back with them) i.e Users request deliveries to other locations(other than their default location) all the time  

• A separate staff member handles research activity when Usernames don't match exactly the recipient name OR if there are duplicate names for a recipient. Research person goes between BT, internal directory and internal task sheet many times during the research process.

• Alerts is a mechanism through which exceptions are handled e.g.

  • Employee sends a TASK message that s/he is on vacation

  • Employee requests the package to be delivered to another person

  • Employee has ​other special handling instructions

  • ALERTS pop up in BT system, when a user is assigned to a package in the system.  

• Vacation tracking is a manual process for mailroom staff and is not tracked inside BT formally (alerts do popup), so delivery is not attempted. But there is no way for BT to inform that employee is back from vacation, and the package can be delivered.

• Chain of custody is maintained through various state changes in the BT system: Received, on the truck, delivered, in the warehouse, etc.