UCSD MAIL DESIGN
Redesigning the Sorting Process —> A Project for Work
I worked as a student employee for the mail services of UC San Diego for two years. During my time as a mail sorter and carrier, I got very acquainted with the system that each piece of mail adheres to once arriving on our So Cal loading dock. Presorted or stamped? Intercampus or external? Student or department? These are only a handful of the questions that will determine an envelopes path. And in a process that only allows a day’s mail to answer said questions from 8am to 1pm, there is little room for confusion.
….Which made my job so frustrating. The mail warehouse was extremely old fashioned. The system was unclear and oral and unreliable. I sought to change that.
Flowchart of my thought process when looking at any given piece of mail—> VERY chaotic and complicated
Defining the Problem
There was a lot of things I liked about the mailroom. But the key pitfalls of the sorting system overshadowed any simple joys the uniquely tactile job entailed. I summarized my observations into two lists; the things I liked and wanted to keep in an improved system, and the things that were absolutely necessary to change if new hires ever aspired to be efficient and confident. From here I could accurately define the problem and brainstorm the best way to go about solving it.
Not-So-Great Things about the Mailroom:
Almost all bins looked identical. Small labels were provided, but said labels were small or poorly written.
Uneven amount of mail codes assigned to each bin. Some would regularly overflow and others would remain untouched for weeks.
Unused old equipment. (I’m specifically reference string-bounding machines from the literal 70’s. While they were useful if you knew how to use them, no one did and they took up lots of space.)
No standard procedure to follow if a change was made—> massive communication issue.
Great Things about the Mailroom:
Concrete, visible layout—> great for visual/spatial thinkers. Route cards & stop labels were used to an extent to help keep things organized.
Timing schedule was somewhat reliable. That is to say, mail would always be delivered at 8:00am and we would be finished with all sorting and delivery by 1:00pm.
Friendly older staff
Takeaway:
The mailroom’s physical nature provided it with lots of potential for clarity in where mail had come from and where it was going. Deficient routines, labels, and resources were creating unnecessary communication and time management problems.
The Cognitive Accomplishment
Like hinted at above, the cognitive accomplishment of the mailroom was rooted in its uniquely tangible implementation. To better define the questions a piece of mail would have to answer in determining its final destination, I sketched a map of the warehouse layout. Map includes color coded “pivotal points” at which mail could go in several directions. Red arrows indicate the spatially accurate path of these directions. It helps mentally visualize the possibilities of where mail could go and how it would get there.
At the time of my employment, I was in COGS 100, a class specifically about distributed cognition. We had to write a paper exploring an example of distributed cognition, complete with descriptions of the activity, units of analysis, emergence, division of cognitive labor, coordination of parts, propagation of representation, temporal distribution, and social and cultural distribution. I wrote mine based off the mailroom. Read the complete paper here.
Organizing the Mail Codes
The biggest issue with mail sortation was not knowing which bin a mail code belonged to. There were over a thousand, so memorization was not an option. New hires, (including myself when I was first brought on,) took way to long wandering around squinting at labels to see if it matched the piece of mail they were trying to sort.
By creating the central cognitive artifact of a massive mail code board, a resource was born that enabled a user to quickly find the right bin for his/her piece of mail.
The mail code board worked something like this— There are 10 possible ways a four digit mail code could start. 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, or 09. So, one’s first step is to reference the list that matches the first two digits of the mail code. From there they can scroll down to locate the following two digits, as I sorted the lists in numerical order. Once found, the code and its associated route and slot are specified and color coordinated. Mail codes in grey indicated expired or discontinued stops.
This system made it significantly easier to visually identify patterns that subconsciously helped with clarity. For example, once I color-coordinated the codes and their routes, I found that route most of the 00 mail was pink and therefore on route 3. most of the 03 mail was lavender and therefore on route 6. Noticing these patterns helped prompted the best way to physically rearrange the mailroom.
Mural
One of my favorite aspects of working at the mail warehouse was the friendly, lively environment. I wanted the physical layout of the new design system to lean into this retro, inclusive atmosphere. After cleaning and reorganizing several shelves and supplies, I was left with a substantial empty corner. I immediately requested permission to paint a mural. They said yes, and the results are below.
Before
After