Canada Post

Overview

While at Canada Post, I actively engaged with the mobile team across diverse projects both Android and IOS. Collaborating seamlessly with product, research, and accessibility units, alongside stakeholders, is pivotal in maintaining a unified user experience. Noteworthy contributions include designing the implementation of features like Dark mode, Quick Drop, ushering in fresh visual design paradigms, and laying the groundwork for a comprehensive mobile illustration repository. 

Role

Visual Designer 
Product Designer 

Tools

Figma 
Adobe Creative Suite

Timeline

2023 - Current

The Canada Post App

During my tenure at Canada Post, we maintained a steady app store rating of 4.6 stars. Throughout 2023, the app garnered 6 million net downloads and received a cumulative 32 million app updates.

In my role as a product and visual designer, I contributed to approximately 20 releases, encompassing both enhancements and the introduction of new features. 

In the app store

I partnered with a fellow designer and researcher to craft compelling app store and play store images. These visuals not only defined our target user demographic but also effectively showcased the app's functionalities and features.

Mobile

Projects

Dark mode

Dark mode is an increasingly popular display setting that alters the color scheme of the user’s interface to use darker colors. Studies have shown that dark mode improves readability and reduces eye fatigue in low-light conditions.
Establishing Dark mode, however, presented many challenges in both Android and IOS.

Initial Assumption:

Easy implementation. Requires turning on a system toggle and replacing images and icons. 


Research: 

Subject matter research and investigations revealed the following

• There is no systematic method to track illustrations and icons on the app. This is due to the accumulation of tech debt acquired over the years 
• IOS and Android follow the M1 brand, an older design guideline, while the rest of the company uses M2.
  • M1 colors have to be mapped to M2 and then assigned a dark mode variant that is accessible
    
  • Colors have to be audited to remove duplicates
    
  • Colors assigned for dark mode must be from the brand and meet accessibility guidelines
• Implementation must be future-proof
  • The updates to the app should be planned in a way that keeps the effort low for developers. This allows room for change in the future with minor effort from the development team

Strategy: 

During a comprehensive audit with the developers, we discovered that the app has accrued significant technical debt over the years, including numerous duplicate assets and inefficient naming conventions. By compiling thorough documentation of these issues, we now have a systematic and efficient approach to addressing the clean-up for the dev team.

In addition to auditing our assets, we conducted a review of our color library across both platforms. Through this process, we've pinpointed duplicate, non-brand, improperly named, and hard-coded colors.

Execution: 

Through this audit, we can consolidate duplicate and non-brand colors, organize them for both light and dark themes, and significantly reduce the size of the color library to about a quarter of its current size. This creates a systematic and streamlined library for the development team to utilize on both platforms. 

Each hex code now had an assigned alias that had a reference to the brand color. 

Themes were created and each color was assigned to a light them and a dark theme. 

Future Design Strategy: 

In parallel with the development execution, we crafted a comprehensive design strategy that leverages Figma theming and tokens. This cohesive framework enables designers to effortlessly translate their work into both light and dark modes. By adopting this strategic approach, we streamline the design process and significantly enhance efficiency for future releases. Creating a standardized system empowers our design team to uphold consistency and adaptability, ensuring that all upcoming projects align seamlessly with the new visual standards.

Final Thoughts:

This project demonstrated its future-proofing by allowing developers to easily incorporate minor changes from stakeholders, thanks to the meticulously tagged UI components. The introduction of dark mode not only enhanced the aesthetic appeal but also improved functionality, ultimately reducing development effort for future projects.

Visual Design 

I've played a key role in shaping the app's brand identity through my visual design contributions. I led the transition to a fresh style and curated an extensive illustration library distributed among various cross-functional teams. I helped establish the rules of this guideline and as the primary liaison, I facilitated the adoption of this style by other teams.
If you're interested in exploring further or learning about my work, feel free to reach out.

Reflection

Canada Post has an incredible UX team with dedicated UX research, accessibility and UX writers that help push product strategy forward. I have the daily opportunity to grow my skills and bring features forward that integrate business strategy and user needs. 

Let's Collaborate!