Don’t Design Smart Lockers for the Average Day

Average usage is useful when planning a smart locker system.

But it should rarely be the only number you consider.

A locker installation may appear to have plenty of spare capacity when demand is averaged across an entire day, week or month. In reality, users do not arrive at perfectly even intervals.

Demand tends to come in peaks.

And it is often those peaks that determine whether a locker system feels well designed or frustrating to use.

Average demand can hide the real requirement

Imagine a locker system that handles 200 transactions during a ten-hour working day.

An average of 20 transactions per hour may sound relatively straightforward.

But what if 80 of those transactions happen between 8:30am and 9:30am?

The average has not changed, but the operational requirement has.

The same principle applies across many locker applications.

Workplace lockers

Hybrid working can create very different occupancy levels from one day to another.

A workplace may appear to have more than enough locker capacity when measured across the whole week, while Tuesday to Thursday mornings tell a very different story.

Understanding attendance patterns and peak arrival periods can therefore be more useful than simply comparing locker numbers with total employee headcount.

Parcel and mailroom lockers

Parcel volumes are rarely distributed evenly throughout the day.

Deliveries may arrive in batches, creating a sudden requirement for available compartments.

The size mix matters too. Twenty parcels do not necessarily require twenty identical lockers.

A peak containing several larger deliveries can create a capacity problem even when plenty of smaller compartments remain unused.

Public venues and leisure environments

Museums, attractions, leisure facilities and event venues can experience very concentrated periods of demand.

Visitors may arrive together before an event, during an interval or at particular points in the day.

A locker system that appears oversized during quiet periods can quickly become fully utilised when the natural visitor flow changes.

Peak demand is about more than locker quantity

Planning for busy periods does not simply mean installing more lockers.

A good specification should consider the entire user journey, including:

• The number of compartments available
• The mix of compartment sizes
• How quickly lockers are allocated and released
• Authentication and access methods
• The number of users who may interact with the system simultaneously
• The physical space around the lockers
• Visibility and wayfinding
• Network and system performance
• What happens when the system reaches full capacity

This is why understanding how a space operates is just as important as knowing how many people use it.

Ask what happens at the busiest point

One of the most useful questions at the beginning of a locker project is:

What does the busiest hour look like?

That can reveal considerably more than an average utilisation figure.

It may influence the number of lockers required, the compartment mix, where the lockers should be positioned or even how users interact with the system.

The objective is not necessarily to design an enormous system for an extreme scenario that happens once a year.

It is to understand the genuine, repeatable peaks that affect the user experience and make an informed decision around them.

The takeaway

A smart locker system should be designed around real behaviour rather than averages alone.

Average utilisation tells you part of the story.

Peak demand tells you whether the system will still work when people need it most.

Don’t design for the average day. Design for the real one.