How Big Is My Locker?
Well, without trying to sound like Goldilocks, we hope your Locker is not too big (to carry); not too small (to hold your stuff); but just the right size (to hold what an average family would like to keep in their home away from home).
Actually, there was a lot of time and research that went into the decision to go with your Locker. On the outside with the lid on, its 24 inches long; 20 inches wide; and 14 inches high, by the way. And the inside dimensions are 22 inches long; 18 ½ inches wide; and 13 inches high.
The decision on length was largely determined by the distance between the shoulders on an average person, which is 24 inches. It is amazing that something just a little wider starts to become unwieldy. I honestly didn’t believe it, so I got several different sized containers and gave them a try. Something weird happens when your arms aren’t at a 90 degree angle to what you’re carrying. The wider the spread, the larger the angle and the more difficult it is to carry. I also found that I couldn’t carry as much weight if the length of what I was carrying was greater than 24 inches. And, I discovered the extreme knuckle discomfort of trying to carry a container much wider than 24 inches through a door. Trust me and don’t try it.
The width of the Locker was also driven by ergonomics. When you pick something up, it’s natural to grab the item by its longest side so the width needed to be less than 24 inches. And, as a container gets wider you have to carry it farther from your body and we’re back with the unwieldy issue. Also, if the width is not shorter than the length it will tend to tip over—either backward—or worse—forward. So that’s where the 20 inch width came from.
The decision on the height of the Locker was far less scientific but just as logical.
I thought the Locker needed to be tall enough for a bottle of champagne to fit in. I’m not kidding. Bottles of liquor tend to be easy to fit into a container but a champagne bottle is tricky because it’s taller.
Enter the weight factor. I feel very strongly that you ought to be able to carry a fully loaded Locker. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Brian and I have looked at each other more than once as we’re moving our Members’ Lockers in and out of the van and said “bricks don’t weigh this much.” But a normal person should be able to carry a normally full Locker. We really didn’t think it was fair to offer a product that you HAD to have a cart or bell services to transport for you. We tried loading up larger prototype Lockers and it would take two people to carry it.
So taking all of this into consideration we were comfortable going forward with the Locker whose dimensions are set out above.
But even though we had given it our best shot, Brian and I still worried a LOT about what Members might think of the size and concluded that the only real way we could find out if we had gotten it right was to let our Members decide. One of the benefits of our Beta Trial, where we had 100 volunteers test our service, was that we could try different things out on a relatively risk free basis and get feedback.
To be honest, we thought we might need to test different sizes of Lockers and we were ready to give some Trial Members different Lockers if size became an issue in the feedback.
But the comments about the size and capacity of our Locker were extremely favorable and we decided that our best shot had been a winner. Here are some of the comments from our Trial members:
Rob L. “The box is bigger than we expected…”
Kathy W. “It’s AWESOME…the Locker is huge.”
Carol A. “It’s bigger than I realized…”
Sabin E. “WOW, I was expecting a smallish recycle box, not a large box…”
Gary H. “The box was bigger than I thought it would be…”
Laura J. “I was very happy with the size of the Locker
Sue P. “It exceeded our expectations of what we could fit in it…”
Debbie A. “I was pleasantly surprised with the size of the Locker…”
And, to be honest, we now realize that we have come up with just about the maximum size for a Locker. Our Members have been utilizing them so efficiently, that they would simply be too heavy for them, us and Bell Services if they were any bigger.
And, one final note. Early on, we planned to have a custom Locker manufactured (at a rather large expense) because we worried that the Locker we used in the Beta Trial might look too “industrial.” We even showed a computer rendering of our “future Locker” to our Beta Trial Members. But it didn’t attract much attention at all. And once we launched and had the Lockers made in our custom purple, the need for a future locker just faded away. Gotta listen to your customers!
