The Most Wonderful Ornament™ kit from United States Postal Service® tracks your Domestic Priority Mail® holiday package to a friend or family member. You’ll know when your package has been sent, delivered and — for the first time ever — opened by the recipient. The product allows the sender and recipient to share the magic moment of opening a gift together, from across the city, country, or globe.
In under three months, Tomorrow Lab worked with McCann New York to define, design, develop, and deliver a small production run of ornament kits for beta trials during the 2016 holiday season.
We generated several options including those that varied between a sitting, hanging, or self-standing design. Within each form concept, we designed options that used scenes, icons, and imagery to indicate the different states of the tracked package. While we wanted to include holiday-inspired scenes, we wanted the design to remain modern and universal.
The core function of the ornament kit is to indicate to the user the status of the package they shipped to a friend or loved one. The ornament displays these three package states to the user: shipped, delivered, and opened. While USPS tracking information is already available on the website, The Most Wonderful Ornament can, for the first time ever, indicate the moment when a package is opened.
We selected cellular connectivity given its ability to work in almost any location without any setup. We also gave both the ornament and package tracker components cellular components to link them to the cloud and to each other. We wrote firmware for each to connect them and indicate the correct package state.
The Most Wonderful Ornament™ kit is comprised of two parts. First, the Tracker, which is embedded in the package being sent. Second, the ornament which indicates the state of the package to the sender.
For the ornament, we decided to pursue the classic ornament shape which could hang or sit. The ornament would be comprised of LED edge-lit acrylic panels, each carrying a simple iconic gift indicating the three package states. The panels overlap inside the ornament generating beautiful lighting effects. We didn’t forget an ornament is an aesthetic object after all!
The tracker, on the other hand, is a discrete object. Mechanically, it features an activation switch to detect when the box has opened. When installed inside the sender’s package, only the top edge is visible. However, when the box is fully empty the recipient is greeted by a label asking them to ship the tracker back to USPS. In a compartment at the end of the tracker, the recipient can find a pocket with an enclosed Business Reply envelope.
After several rounds of prototype production, we created a short production run. In this phase of work, Tomorrow Lab received all parts and assembled the products in house. USPS provided packaging and labels for the ornaments to be delivered. In partnership with McCann, we completed the final kit and assembly in about a week.
