First Sight
I first saw an APC when I was back home for break in Georgia. I don't go to the post office that often but this time, I was sending a postcard to some friends in Tokyo. When I walked into the post office, I saw the machine and as any designer would, decided to try it out. Overall, the experience was good. Remembering this, I decided to find one nearby in Cambridge for this assignment.

Background
Located in post office lobbies across the nation, the Automated Postal Center (APC) is a "self service kiosk [which] allows customers to buy stamps or mail letters and packages in a self-service environment". This has been in testing at least before 2001 and was officially deployed in 2004. An news headline in June 2007 stated that in 3 years, APCs had brought in $1 billion in revenue through 190 million transactions. Currently, there are 2,500 APCs at post offices throughout the nation. The APC won the United States Postal Service (USPS) the Self Service Street People's Choice Winner at the 2007 KioskCom Self Service Expo.

The current description of the APC on the USPS website. Combined with the findings of this analysis, the needs that this self-service kiosk it is intended to fulfill are:

• reduce time spent for a customer at the post office
• reduce waiting times for those for whom the APC cannot meet their post office needs
• purchase stamps for a customer
• weigh and print postage for letters and packages for a customer