DISCOVERY RESEARCH
To understand where we stood, we hit the streets. We conducted field research and guerrilla testing in malls, retail spaces, and physical branches to measure users' actual awareness of CorreosChile's products.
The findings were revealing:
- Brand awareness as a digital solutions provider was extremely low
- Services for entrepreneurs and enterprises were completely unknown to most users
- Even loyal shipping customers didn't understand the full CorreosChile product line
Partnering with the external research agency Soho, I consolidated the field data using Miró for information-architecture mapping, resulting in three user archetypes that drove product design decisions across the ecosystem.
USER ARCHETYPES
ARCHETYPE 01
Occasional Shippers (Mobile App)
Casual customers using CorreosChile shipping services sporadically.
Primary need: fast, simple shipping without physical branch visits.
ARCHETYPE 02
SMB Entrepreneurs (Virtual Branch)
Small-business owners with consistent medium-volume shipments. Primary
need: batch shipping tools and pickup logistics.
ARCHETYPE 03
Enterprise Clients (Corporate portal)
Companies with high-volume monthly shipments. Primary need:
automated dashboard, shipment history intelligence, and self-service portal.
Project Breakdown
Discovery research, ecosystem delivery, and the design system that scaled it all Once Merkén was established as the foundation and the team was in place, we moved into the core design work: discovery research that shaped user archetypes, four product bets across the ecosystem, and the technical evolution of Merkén itself.
THE ECOSYSTEM: FOUR PRODUCT BETS
0-to-1
8 Month
Mobile App
Problem
Occasional shippers had to visit physical branches for every shipment.
Action
I designed the mobile app end-to-end, translating Virtual Branch's transactional flow into a native mobile experience with in-app shipment creation, tracking, and self-service documentation.
Result
Launched on App Store and Play Store. Decongested 198 branches by moving shipping documentation to self-service mobile.
1.5 Years
Rebuild
Virtual Branch Redesign for Entrepreneurs
Problem
Occasional shippers had to visit physical branches for every shipment.
Action
I designed the mobile app end-to-end, translating Virtual Branch's transactional flow into a native mobile experience with in-app shipment creation, tracking, and self-service documentation.
Result
10x transaction throughput (1 → 10 packages per user) and per-visit abandonment reduced from 40% to 5
0-to-1
Enterprise Portal
Problem
Enterprise clients lacked a self-service portal to manage high-volume shipments.
Action
I designed a SaaS dashboard from scratch based on shipment history intelligence, enabling both automatic and manual shipment creation for corporate accounts.
Result
Supports volumes of 5,000-10,000 weekly shipments per enterprise client.
ECCH App Redesign (Internal ops tool)
Problem
Workers at national voting centers used a legacy internal app for scanning and sealing ballot boxes, a process that still required significant manual paperwork.
Action
Applying Merkén's component library, I redesigned the internal workflow to simplify the scan-and-seal process with clearer states, error handling, and reduced tap counts.
Result
Radically simplified a critical national infrastructure workflow.
MERKÉN: TECHNICAL DEEP-DIVE
Merkén was more than a component library, it was the systems foundation that made the four-product ecosystem possible.
Built in Figma with technical documentation in Storybook, Merkén was based on Material Design guidelines but adapted to CorreosChile's brand identity and operational context.
70+ components across 4 platforms (desktop, tablet, mobile, totems)
WCAG-compliant accessibility patterns
Cross-platform design token system supporting both digital and physical touchpoints
Documentation in Storybook accessible to the entire dev team
30% development time saved (~3 days per sprint) because engineering could pull ready-to-use components instead of rebuilding UI patterns from scratch.
THE SEMANTIC RED PROBLEM
Situation
Red is the primary color of CorreosChile's branding. But in accessibility and usability, red universally signals "error" or "alert." A design system that uses red as its primary color would trigger cognitive dissonance for every user, is this brand color, or an error message?
Task
Design a color system that could honor the brand's iconic red while maintaining WCAG accessibility standards for interface communication.
Action
I recalibrated the color palette to use red tones as primary interface colors without users semantically interpreting them as error messages. This required:
- Designing a distinct error state palette that could visually stand out from the primary red
- Adjusting saturation and brightness to differentiate brand red from alert red
- Testing accessibility contrast ratios across all component states
- Documenting when to use each red tone in the Merkén guidelines
Result
Merkén met WCAG accessibility requirements while preserving brand identity, a design decision that unlocked scalable UI without compromising business requirements or user comprehension.
Brand
Error
