Streamline package receiving
If you've lived in an apartment building, you know the stress of getting packages delivered. Hoping your box isn't stolen or left out on the street. You may have resorted to getting mail delivered to your office or a friend's place.
Resident happiness will go down if staff can’t send delivery notifications, or packages get lost.
The problem
Managing daily deliveries is a never ending task for apartment community staff. In a large property, this can get out of hand without proper tools.
Our goal was to provide a way for on-site staff to intake packages and notify residents. We are successful when new and existing customers adopt the feature.
My role
Product Designer
User research
User story writing
Visual Design
Prototyping and User Testing
February - June 2024
Who is this solution for?
Large apartment communities no package management technology.
Most apartments fall into three categories:
No package management tools. There is no on-site team, or the building is too small to need any tech.
No package organization. Building staff stores packages behind the desk or on a shelf. Residents are responsible for tracking down staff to pick up packages, creating friction.
Secure package management solution. Amazon lockers, Luxor One, and Parcel Pending are the most common.
Our solution will support properties in the second category. It will bridge the gap for a building with a lot of tenants, but no budget or infrastructure for lockers.
A normal Tuesday after USPS shows upFront desk staff responsible for handling deliveries
With the Lead Engineer, I led a workshop with the developers to understand our users.
Our primary user is building staff responsible for handling deliveries. This person could be a doorman, package room attendant, or concierge. Tasks include:
Coordinating deliveries from Amazon, Fedex, and UPS throughout the day
Keeping the lobby clear
Organizing boxes in the package room or shelves
Retrieving packages for residents
They must be able to enter many packages into the system, and notify residents of a delivery.
Residents!
Arguably the important, this solution will help residents. At large properties without any organization, it’s common for packages to get lost, misplaced, even stolen. By giving the property and staff tools to manage packages and send notifications in a timely manner, residents will feel confident their deliveries and purchases are being cared for and trust the property they live in.
Text from a friend about her chicago high riseBackground and our existing solution
VTS acquired Rise Buildings in 2021. Rise's native package management tool processes over 2 million packages per year. To migrate Rise customers to VTS Activate, we had to build a new package management feature.
I worked on the original Rise feature in 2020, I used years of customer feedback on Rise packages to evaluate the current experience:
Residents aren’t motivated to open an app to mark their package as picked up. The MVP would use email and sms notifications rather than a resident app experience.
The tool is successful because staff can enter a "scan" mode to enter many packages in a row. The user first snaps a photo of the label with a tablet or phone. Then optical character recognition (OCR) populates the fields with the right data. The new feature would also use an OCR.
Rise Buildings Package management flowThe package’s journey
To keep an organized package room and happy tenants, staff users must enter packages into the system, and notify residents of a deliveries.
Staff creates a package record
The staff user will use a building issued tablet or smartphone to:
Log a single package
Log dozens of packages in one session without interruption
Send notifications to residents that they have a package
Initial wireframesUsers stay in a “scan mode.” They will enter a package with two clicks, assuming the shipping label is clear.
I kept the entry form as simple as possible, the system must only know who to notify.
Hand off package to the resident
The user will use a building issued tablet or smartphone to:
Locate a package record on behalf of a resident
Change a package’s status from “Pending pickup” to “Picked up” to clear it from the awaiting pickup list.
List format and search exploration
Proposed MVP
A swipe gesture changes the package status and removes it from the pending queue. This action is familiar and easy to undo.
Proposed MVP
Next Steps
After the MVP, I planned to design improved in-app notifications for residents. Unfortunately, the initiative was scrapped midway through development due to roadmap changes 😕. VTS would continue to sell the Rise package management tool to customers.
Learnings
My squad went through 3 PMs during this project. I stepped in to cover PM duties and presented the team’s progress to stakeholders. I also worked with engineering to write user stories, plan sprints, and review design work. It was an unexpected opportunity, and I used things I learned to improve my work for my other squad.
Another challenge was working with a team of new contractors on a tight deadline. The team relied on me to educate everyone on the product.
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