Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I redesigned the USPS package delivery slip

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–69 of 69 posts

Re: Show HN: I redesigned the USPS package delivery slip

#64

Post by BinaryIdiot »

rmstwitterbot wrote: post #6
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #5

This is a significant improvement though the form itself is still incredibly busy. I would much rather have something more tailored to my delivery than this generic thing that requires effort from everyone involved. This is a good solution for 2007 but 2015? This needs more automation. For instance USPS should know what type of delivery it is, customer name, sender, addresses and whether it's a final notice or not. W…

Because government contractors are notoriously awful at technology being that they are selected via cronyism. This would be an expensive, proprietary label system requiring special proprietary ink and labels that would likely break after being used 50 times, and require an authorized repair contractor to fix it. A relative or friend of the executive at USPS who implemented this would receive the contract and just tak…

This is how ALL technology changes happen in the government, unfortunately. I've done plenty of public contracting and a vast majority of the people involved are simply terrible mostly because when you're rewarded a contract in order to get all of the money possible you have to fill every empty seat which means a butts-in-seats mentality versus a lean or better team.

But progress isn't made when we sit there with our thumbs up our butts either. Essentially you're saying USPS can never be improved because contractors suck and because it's hard. That's unacceptable. It's hard yes but it's possible.

Re: Show HN: I redesigned the USPS package delivery slip

#66

Post by BinaryIdiot »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #15
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #5

This is a significant improvement though the form itself is still incredibly busy. I would much rather have something more tailored to my delivery than this generic thing that requires effort from everyone involved. This is a good solution for 2007 but 2015? This needs more automation. For instance USPS should know what type of delivery it is, customer name, sender, addresses and whether it's a final notice or not. W…

Although automation could certainly be implemented to some extent here, note that on city routes the carrier will often use this form when not near their vehicle (flats fit in the bag). There are several options for body-worn thermal printers, but durability of the device and output might be a problem. These cards are printed on pretty heavy stock and are really very sturdy. As far as body-worn printing of adhesive l…

This is a solve-able problem.

First, we need to gather data regarding the frequency of leaving these notes. I suspect this is practically exceptional given the required costs associated with requiring a signature (only anecdotal but even more expensive purchases I've made almost never need a signature).

Once you collect data that's your baseline for the printer's reliability. It must work at a minimum that many times per delivery route (in practice it probably doesn't). There are dozens of options for small, portable printers that are relatively inexpensive. So even before you start custom designing a more reliable printer get the costs of purchasing them in bulk and pilot them in an area attached to mail carrier bags.

Fading / inking coming off would be an edge case; the vast majority of these notes are going to be basically warnings that you need to pick up your package or asking them to redeliver it and you have a very limited amount of time to do this before it gets sent back.

Packages have barcodes, have the printer scan that to instantly generate an appropriate label.

It's not the easiest thing in the world but I could put together a pilot for this inside of a week with proper USPS API access. Get into a fast iteration cycle, increase reliability of printers and prints, automate changing of ink and paper upon delivery route completion through some docking mechanism.

I almost want to just start building this thing, ha!

Re: Show HN: I redesigned the USPS package delivery slip

#67

Post by flubert »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #52
jschwartzi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USPS has no budget from Congress. They're the only government agency in the US that is required to break even using the money they collect from fees.

Congress passed a law in 2006 stating that the USPS must pre-fund benefits. It didn't allocate any money for it, though. It's the equivalent of your credit card company saying "we think we'll end up lending you $1m over the lifetime of the card, so can you pay us back all of that up front?"

I still haven't figured out why this is so controversial. You have a service that seems to be in inevitable decline. Instead of pretending that future revenue will always be enough to cover pension requirements, why not take steps now to prevent problems in the future? Maybe the disconnect is that some people are predicting a resurgence in letter writing?

Re: Show HN: I redesigned the USPS package delivery slip

#68

Post by thecosas »

scopecreep wrote: post #63

My postman can't even be bothered to properly fill out the current one. How adding more questions to the thing will help that problem is unclear to me.

Part of this redesign is making it easier for the mail carrier as well:

I decided to place all these sections at the top since you want to know this information first. I made it more readable by putting them within a single Mad-Libs style human-readable sentence. This is the main section the mail carrier will need to fill out, too, so it should also make her job quicker to have all the writing in one place.

Post reply on HN