I just finished working with Dave on a proposal for the second edition of the Muji award, and being designers of course, we waited till the last minute to submit our proposal.
In this particular case, Dave is in Boston, I’m in London and the proposal had to be sent to Japan by Tuesday next week. We were done with everything by Friday afternoon, but that meant that traditional postal services were no longer an option (we also had to get 2 A3 printed etc…)
We turned to the most efficient option, in this case Fedex Kinkos. Trying to figure anything online with these services is a mess but we didn’t have a choice. We thought about it a little and then thought… hey wait a minute! What if we get their Japan-based office to print this out, and they can send the stuff through from there as well! This will not only mean that the proposal will be received on time, but will actually be much greener as it wont have to take a plane to get there!
With all the greenwashing going on, it was refreshing to find a nugget of sustainable opportunity in a clunky service. Only thing is that it seems that Fedex haven’t figured this out yet, because payment online, without a Fedex account, is not possible and transacting between Kinkos and Fedex seemed to involve someone from their office printing it out, calling Dave to arrange payment on the phone (!!) and then being able to send it…
This is when you realise that there are organisational and corporate roadblocks to a seamless and converged service that could otherwise make an experience much more enjoyable (and sustainable).