United States Postal Service Project

As a member of a 15-person team of graduate students, I am redesigning the Domestic Mail Manual (a list of rules, regulations and dense, text-based information) into a document that has clear language, diagrams and images. Tasks include participating in field research and designing an information architecture and page layouts.

The goal of USPS project is to create a new system of user-centered documents that contain the mailing standards for the US Postal Service, an agency that employs over 700,000 people. The proposal is to restructure information and navigation in the DMM (a 1,000 page book that serves as the chief operations manual for the USPS), making the document more accessible for postal employees, professional mailers, and lawyers inside and outside of the USPS.

The Domestic Mail Manual

It contains all the rules and regulations than apply to any mail piece delivered in the United States. In its orginial form, the Domestic Mail Manual was organized primarily by mailing topics and then by mail piece shape and class.

User Research

As part of the process for designing the book I and other team members went out and interviewed local businesses to learning about their mailing practices. I was also assigned to work on a 3-person team to take the transcripts of these user interviews and analyze them for any interesting findings. Among the deliverable we choose to create were diagrams that traced the steps to produce and mailing and the network of 3rd party venders that support the mailing process.

Steps to Produce a Mailing

Vendor Network (all venders)

Vendor Network (for a single mailer)

As a result of our research, the DMM was restructured to follow the process of mailing: from determining the rate applied to a mailing, sorting a mailing to receive discounts, design of the mail piece and depositing a mailing at the Post Office.

Restructuring the Rate Tables

We needed to restructure the tables by shape instead of by class. We began by representing the information structure of the rate tables, (for eight different classes of mail) by looking at the the attributes that would affect the cost. The diagram below can function as a decision tree showing the options available to the mailer.