ERIKA WANG

about

Carriers That Care

ERIKA WANG

about

Canada Post: Carriers that Care


Roles

Design Strategy
UX/UI Design
UX Research
Content Design

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.



The product

OVERVIEW

A check-in service, supported digitally

Although the Carriers that Care service is to be conducted in-person, postal workers and customers would need resources to ensure trust in the service. I lead the identification of necessary digital touchpoints, which lead the team and I to create a website, app, and dashboard to support postal workers and customers of Canada Post.

PHASE 1

Landing page

Establishing trust in the service

The discovery process of Carriers that Care includes a landing page with content to push the social aspects of the service, with 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.

Scrollthrough of landing page.

Sign-ups

Ensuring consent from recipients of the service

Anticipating cases where families will be signing up their senior parents without warning, 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.

The final screen of the sign-up process.

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

PHASE 2

Check-in and reporting

An app for postal workers

Once committed to the service, a postal worker will be assigned to conduct routine visits to the recipient's home. To simplify the service process for letter carriers, and to make the service less dependent on the carrier's individual ability to report on seniors, the reporting process will be conducted through mobile devices on the carrier.

Avoiding medical advice

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, carriers would only be able to report objective data through the app (ie. whether or not a senior has new bruises). Additionally, Canada Post would not be allowed to suggest actions.

PHASE 3

E-mails

Summarized check-in reports

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.

Dashboard

Access to full reports & further actions

The dashboard will provide access to full reports once letter carriers start sending reports. At any point in the service, customers will also be able to fine-tune the service to their comfort with the ability to adjust visitation plans, collect more information about their assigned letter carrier, or submit feedback to the service.

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.




The process

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.

"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)

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, which their earliest version dates back to 2016.

INSIGHT #2

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

"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)

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.

DESIGN SPRINT - IDEATION

Finding a starting point

Following our proposal, my team and I kicked off our process with a 4-day design sprint, with the goal of identifying how we could best translate the exisiting check-in models of Japan Post and La Poste (France) to a Canadian context. At this point in our design process, all team members saw different ways Carriers that Care could fail, so I found that a sprint helped greatly pooling our thoughts to illustrate a shared understanding of what each of us thought were most actionable problem space in the service.

INITIAL 'HOW MIGHT WE' STATEMENT

How might we ensure trust in the service?

Notably, our golden path exercise (pictured above) helped the team and I brainstorm several 'HMW' statements to use as starting points for our design project. Statements we created ranged from logisitical ('HMW fit this into a postie's day-to-day?') to aspirational ('HMW ensure this service doesn't become box-checking?') - ultimately, we settled on a statement that helped us set the focus of the service towards establishing trust and connections between service and customer.

DESIGN SPRINT - INTERVIEWS

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

As a result of the golden path exercise, 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.

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?"

ADJUSTED HMW STATEMENT, GIVEN THE RESULTS

How might address the social aspect of the health and wellbeing of seniors through Canada Post?

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.


DESIGN SPRINT RESULTS

Focusing the service on social isolation & loneliness

Following user interviews, we conducted further research into "aging at home", hoping to find an area that postal workers could comfortably intervene in.

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

Secondary research sourced from the National Institute of Ageing (NIA) - particularly, their "Ageing in the Right Place" report, defines 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.

This framework helped my team and I scope down our service focus to the fourth pillar, improving social connections to reduce loneliness and social isolation. I felt that this focus would be essential in keeping the trust of Carriers that Care, as I feel that postal workers would not have the capacity to reasonably support the other three pillars without fundamental changes to their jobs.

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

FINAL "HOW MIGHT WE" STATEMENT

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

Given the research from the National Institue of Aging, we were able to frame the features of Carriers that Care around an investigation into how Canada Post may be able to use their current business values and brand image to reach the needs of a customer demographic that may have been overlooked by them.

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.