What Royal Mail teaches us about optimising for trust, not perfection.

Last year, I forgot to send my gran a birthday present. I felt crap.

Partly, I didn’t realise how fast April flew by. But mostly, I dreaded the faff of posting a parcel.

I once queued so long to send one that the line went round the block.

As a result, parcels pile up in my house. I miss return deadlines. I miss birthdays.

Until someone said to me recently,

“You know there’s an app for that right?”

To be honest, my expectations were low.

Low because this is one of the many UK services that have been privatised and postal services have a bad reputation (for stunts like this).

But how wrong I was.

This time round sending my grandmother a birthday present never felt so easy.

I didn’t leave the house. I didn’t hunt for a printer cable. I didn’t even run out of ink and buy the wrong cartridge.