Platform: Responsive Web
Status: Live
Company: MRM//McCann
Enabled the public to read and "adopt" letters to Santa sent through the USPS. By adopting the letters the public could send gifts through the mail to letter writer.
Operation Santa is a 105 year old USPS program that lets the public read and respond to letters to Santa. The public can read the letters in select post offices and “adopt” them by purchasing a gift and mailing it to the letter writer through the USPS. The process, until last year, was entirely analog and manual.
Our challenge was to update an analog, century old program in order to increase adoption and lower costs. This meant finding the correct stakeholders who could tell us how it worked, and then creating a new process from scratch.
Create a pilot program in New York City that would make the letters available online in order to raise awareness and streamline the adoption flow.
Scan and digitize letters by outsourcing letter ingestion and redaction of PII to an existing vendor.
Create a back end website to allow postal employees to QA and approve letters.
Create a public facing responsive website for the public to view and “adopt” letters.
Create a system connecting the website to the post office so that “adopters” could bring their packages in to mail.
Find and interview client stakeholders to discover how the program actually ran.
Collaboratively brainstorm a series of new processes for getting letters scanned, redacted, online, adopted by the public, and fulfilled. Create a series of user flows to illustrate the process and create a proposal for the client.
Create a series of user flows and wireframes to define the experience of the new process, and refine through review with all disciplines. After wireframe sign off, visual design and development was completed, with input from the UX, account, and strategy team.
Hold a weekly scrum throughout the project to keep the project on track.
Widespread publicity from local and national outlets such as the New York Times, CBS, NBC10, ABC7, Daily News, Bustle. 9,579,801 total impressions.
14,701 letters processed, an increase of over 10,000 from the previous year.
Letter adoption had matched previous year’s total by day 3.
4,870 letters adopted, 4,129 packages shipped.
Letter adoption rose by 340%.
The team all went on Christmas break knowing that we had improved Christmas for over 4000 children.
Assisted with discovery tasks: scoped work, assisted with timeline creation, assigned UX designers.
Led UX team: Created UX deliverables; guided, managed, and provided feedback to UX team in building out, and refining UX deliverables; worked with internal stakeholders, vendors and client stakeholders to design updated processes; worked with visual designers and developers to implement the user experience.
Worked with client stakeholders: Presented work, worked with stakeholders to understand feedback and their process.
