Some years ago, I was consulting as a user researcher for a parcel service that provides parcel lockers for self-service pick-up. They wanted to improve how they communicated the occupancy status of a given locker, to indicate the likelihood of a parcel being delivered to the original locker or being rerouted.
Their data was very accurate, and they could transparently communicate the occupancy status for the estimated day of delivery. People could also arrange for their parcel to be delivered elsewhere at their own discretion. Nonetheless, a lot of people regularly complained about occupied lockers and being forced to collect their parcel from an inconvenient pick-up station.
It was assumed that the way the status was being communicated was faulty or misleading, since the data itself wasn't. There had to be a usability problem. So I stepped in and set up an interview series with some prototypes of improved UIs, to see whether the status would be better understood and whether people would make more informed decisions about how to receive their parcels.
After a couple of interviews, a first insight emerged: the customers simply didn't believe the data was correct. They assumed it wasn't worth checking the status at all. They all had stories of receiving parcels at their preferred locker even when it had been marked as occupied, or of being rerouted even when the locker had been shown as available.
They wouldn't accept that in nine out of ten cases — or more — the status was accurate. The memory of a bad experience dominated. Even when I told them directly that the data was quite reliable, only a few said they would consider consulting it in future. It seemed too much effort to check in advance, even though nearly everyone admitted to being annoyed when their parcel was redirected at the delivery service's discretion.
In the end, I concluded that customers would very likely continue ignoring the information and simply hope for the best. The interviews made clear that ingrained mistrust was the real issue. We would need to persuade them to trust the status — but it was equally clear that this couldn't be achieved simply by improving the UI.
We did find some usability improvements nonetheless: adding more detail to the status display, with the aim of gradually educating customers that the information was, in fact, reliable enough to inform their decisions. Yet this felt like a small step on a much longer journey — one of shifting customer habits from passive optimism to active parcel management. Thankfully, the team was pleased with the research, as it helped them understand the core issue, even if I hadn't been able to resolve it by tweaking a single feature.
Note: Post was redacted for better English on 2026-03-14