Ameelio Mail

Ameelio is a nonprofit working to make incarceration more humane. We focus on improving access to communication between people who are incarcerated, their families, friends, and lawyers. Access to communication is a path to reducing recidivism.

Problem

Ameelio Mail is an app that helps people stay connected to their incarcerated loved ones by providing low-cost ways to send mail. The app had grown unreliable over the years so we formed a small team to investigate the issues and make recommendations for improving the experience. I worked with 2 engineers and 1 product manager.

Problem

Ameelio Mail is an app that helps people stay connected to their incarcerated loved ones by providing low-cost ways to send mail. The app had grown unreliable over the years so we formed a small team to investigate the issues and make recommendations for improving the experience. I worked with 2 engineers and 1 product manager.

Cleaner home page

By decluttering our home page, we were able to give more focus to the content that people actually cared about—their photos. In addition to a simpler flow for sending photos, this new approach helped us solve a lot of our technical issues. What we launched was an update that brought the app more in line with how people were using it, improved the stability of the app, and gives us a stronger foundation to continue to iterate on.

Cleaner home page

By decluttering our home page, we were able to give more focus to the content that people actually cared about—their photos. In addition to a simpler flow for sending photos, this new approach helped us solve a lot of our technical issues. What we launched was an update that brought the app more in line with how people were using it, improved the stability of the app, and gives us a stronger foundation to continue to iterate on.

Before

After

Simpler creation experience

One of the most important flows in the app is composing your photo and letter. We updated photo selection to feel more natural to how you'd expect it to behave on other photo sharing apps.

Simpler creation experience

One of the most important flows in the app is composing your photo and letter. We updated photo selection to feel more natural to how you'd expect it to behave on other photo sharing apps.

Photo sending flow

Bottom sheets

Updated bottom sheets for helping people make different choices.

Bottom sheets

Updated bottom sheets for helping people make different choices.

Different bottom sheets

Results

After these changes, Ameelio Mail became profitable. As a nonprofit, making money is never our primary focus, but this allowed us to continue investing in other projects that will help us acheive our mission of making incarceration more humane.

Results

After these changes, Ameelio Mail became profitable. As a nonprofit, making money is never our primary focus, but this allowed us to continue investing in other projects that will help us acheive our mission of making incarceration more humane.