Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service

The Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service contains all official rates and standards governing domestic mailing services. The document is challenged by the need to serve multiple functions (reference, instructional, informational) for multiple audiences (customers of the USPS, USPS employees, lawyers, and policy guardians). In the past its structure and content tended to favour those who maintain the rules—that is, people with expert knowledge—rather than the people who need to complete mailing tasks, as individuals, businesses, or employees of the USPS.




The design team utilised a number of innovative research techniques to develop a user-centred approach to re-designing the document architecture and completed the document as the capstone of the DMM Transformation Project in 2005. A two-year effort, the document architecture was developed first, along with heavy research and prototyping activities that focused on the product experience and technical feasibility.


Applying the logic of an entirely new, user-centred structure, the goal was to provide greater ease-of-access and ease-of-use by addressing the “findability” of information. The design team focused on providing more intuitive organisation and presentation of information, using a contextual, task-based arrangement of information and clearer visual and textual presentation. User research revealed evidence about intuitive approaches to mailing tasks, such as using mail shape and service class as basic organising principles, and helped establish more logical sequencing and clustering of information.




With the objective of increasing findability, decreasing “flipping” (multiple destination search sequences), and managing redundancy where appropriate, the new design focused on orienting the document to align with the needs and expectations of a variety of users, rather than just the experts. The manual was produced for both print and online formats, generating from a single source and meeting 508-compliant accessibility requirements.


To read the introduction to the Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, download a copy (PDF).


To read the USPS Process Book, download a copy (PDF).


DMM300 HTML samples available at http://pe.usps.gov/text/dmm300/pub268.htm.

 

Portfolio > Information Design > USPS Publication DMM300

Client: US Postal Service


My Role: Project Lead