When I used to work at the Science Museum, we, like many companies had an internal mail system based around those orange envelopes – the ones (I don’t know their name, apart from “internal mail envelope”) with maybe 40 boxes to show who to send the envelope to next.

I always liked these – firstly, because it’s a simple, economical solution to a problem – but mainly because they get more interesting the longer they’re in use. Not only do you get the feeling that this thing is being sent around all four corners of an institution and somehow gathering a story as it goes (imagine the confidential missives, bills, invoices, letters, love notes!?), but there is also a real, hand-written audit trail of the journey as well.

So. I thought it’d be interesting to take one of these at the end of their journey and see where it’d been and think about ways in which I could map that journey. I’m no longer at the Science Museum, but my current company uses the same envelopes – and although it probably won’t be as interesting a journey (we are only 100 people in two sites, as opposed to the 800 or so split over three sites at the museums), it’s still worth a punt.

Now, the ways in which you could do this vary. I punted a couple of thoughts about this experiment on Twitter and two or three people suggested RFID readers, barcodes or other gizmoid style solutions. This is all very well (and thanks!), but the requirement here is something quick and dirty; low cost, easy, minimal (no) impact to end users. So instead of opting for hi-tech, I’ve simply written “Please return this envelope to Mike Ellis” in the last box on the envelope. That’s it.

So. There’s nothing left to do but send a few of these envelopes out into the wild and see what happens. I’ll also add my return message on any orange envelopes I get from now on, and hope that they find their way home.

It’d be fascinating to see what would happen with this experiment on a much bigger scale – @psychemedia (Tony Hirst) suggested hospitals – or what about the whole NHS? Or Google? Or Microsoft…

Data-wise, here’s a quick braindump of five things you could map / visualise:

> mapping the path (only really relevant across disparately located organisations, although could “heat map” a floorplan of a company?)
> time taken for envelope to get “used up” (requires a timestamp on the first address box)
> most commonly mailed people
> most commonly mailed departments
> success rates (how many envelopes sent out get back to source..?)

If you’d like to take part in the experiment in your organisation, or have any ideas for how we could cut the data, let me know in the comments – and maybe add #envelopetravels to any tweets, blog posts or pictures that you take..