Design Thinking at The Walt Disney Company
Magical Moments
The Walt Disney Company is focused creating Magical Moments. As Bob Iger, former CEO now chairman of the board states “our guests want to be amazed, delighted, and entertained. They are looking for the kind of magic that will transport them from their everyday lives into worlds that can only be created by Disney.”
Magic to the observer emits feelings of wonder and surprise. It’s something you witness and experience not really knowing how it came about. However, to the magician, magic is something that is carefully crafted, meticulously planned and well rehearsed.
Disney understands that there is a process to creating these Magical Moments. That the details matter, that planning and effort go into creating Magical Moments. That’s the essence of design thinking, a recognition that design isn’t simply a function, that there is a design process to guide everyone involved.
The Experience Economy
In their highly influential book The Experience Economy, B. Joseph Pine II and James Gilmore argued that we’ve observed a long progression of how economic value is created over time from extracting commodities (agrarian economy) to making goods (industrial economy) to delivering services (service economy) to now needing to stage experiences (experience economy).
The key takeaway, customers want memorable experiences, and companies must learn how to become stagers of these experiences.
It’s this concept of staging experiences that is so important. Staging recognizes the process aspect of design thinking. The fact that magical moments don’t happen simply by chance, they are designed. There is a stage being a place, a cast of people, people who perform both ‘on-stage’ and ‘back-stage’ in order to create a unique and memorable experience.
Disney has always understood that staging experiences is at the heart of what they do when creating Magical Moments. How do they go about it?
“Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.”
The Quality Service Compass
The Quality Service Compass represents the process or method that Disney applies as it goes about creating those Magical Moments we’ve all experienced. It consists of four core quality service principles: (1) Guestology, (2) Quality Standards, (3) Delivery Systems, and (4) Integration.
(1) GUESTOLOGY
Guestology was a term created by Walt Disney himself and is defined as the art and science of knowing and understanding guests (customers) expectations.
What’s the difference between treating someone like a customer, and treating them like a guest?
The obvious analogy is that we do things differently when we bring Guests into our home. We clean up the house. We dress up. We prepare something special to eat. We host them. We take care of their real needs.
At Walt Disney World, exceeding Guest expectations is the standard call to duty for all cast members, both “onstage” and “backstage”.
“Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” Walt Disney
This core principle of guestology is the starting point, the foundation on which everything else is built. Since everything at Disney is done with the guest in mind.
(2) QUALITY STANDARDS
Once you’ve define your service or experience goals, you can begin to define your quality standards. For Disney, in order of importance, they consist of safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency.
The safety of each guest is taken very seriously and goes beyond meeting local city safety codes and requirements. Safety features are designed in the attractions, the transport systems, hotels, and even eateries.
The quality standard of courtesy required that every guest be treated like a VIP. Fulfilling this standard means treating people the way we would want to be treated; the way they would want to be treated; recognizing that Disney guests come to the venue from all different cultures and backgrounds, having different emotions and abilities.
The show quality standard reflects the common purpose of being the ‘finest in entertainment’, creating an uninterrupted performance from beginning to end. It all comes down to putting on a good show. All guest experiences are evaluated or judged as to whether it was a ‘good show’ or a ‘bad show’.
Efficiency is a quality standard that seeks to accomplish both efficient outcomes for guests as well as efficient outcomes the business. For the guest it’s all about enjoying as much of the theme park as they wish. For the business, it’s about managing expenses and maximizing profits.
(3) DELIVERY SYSTEMS
You can think of delivery systems as the mechanisms or channels by which you achieve the stated quality standards. As part of the Quality Service Compass there are three core delivery systems: Cast, Setting, and Process.
All cast members go through the Disney Traditions orientation program and are taught how to approach their roles as well as the expected performance culture (behaviors, mannerisms, terms and values) they are expected to portray.
The setting is wherever your customer meets you. This could be a ticketing booth, a hotel lobby, the website, a call center, or meeting Mickey or Minnie while walking around the park. All interactions with cast members in each and every setting must support and further the show being created.
The process encompasses both cast and setting, representing how to move guests through an attractions, check-in or check-out processes at the hotel, interacting with guests as a Disney character, to responding to medical issues or emergencies. No details go unnoticed or planned out in advance as part of the show.
(4) INTEGRATION
Integration is how Disney creates a unique yet consistent guest experience for everyone who visits one its properties. Integration is an operative word to Disney. Integration is the work of bringing all of the elements of safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency together to create a complete experience. It is how its delivery system of cast (people), setting (place), and process (touchpoints and interactions), are used to ensure these standards are achieved across all guest experiences.
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Setting Design Principles
As we have discussed at Disney creating a guest experience is both a way of thinking as well as a process. In design these magical moments thinking about the setting plays an important part.
Disney appreciates that the setting can do much more than simply create a good first impression in a customer's mind. They have a deep understanding of how the setting can reinforce the story you are telling. That it can even be utilized to guide guests through the experience itself.
Mary Sklar, a former Imagineer, in the book Be Our Guest provides a list of setting-design principles which he refers to as Mickey's Ten Commandments:
Know your Audience: before creating a setting, obtain a firm understanding of who will be using it.
Wear your guest's shoes: never forget the human factor; evaluate your setting from the guest's perspective by experiencing it as a guest.
Organize the flow of people and ideas: think of the setting as a story, and tell that story in a sequenced, organized way.
Create a visual magnet: ensure that you have a visual landmark that orients and attracts customers.
Communicate with visual literacy: language is not always composed of words. Use the common language of color, shape, and form to communicate through setting.
Avoid overload: do not bombard guests with data. Let them chose the information they want when they want it.
Tell one story at a time: avoid confusion, create one setting for each big idea. Mixing multiple stories in a single setting leads to confusion.
Avoid contradictions; maintain identity: every detail and every setting should support and further your organizational identity and mission.
For every ounce of treatment, provide a ton of treat: provide your guests the highest value you can attain by giving them an interactive setting that gives them the opportunity to exercise all of their senses.
Keep it up: never get complacent, and always maintain your setting.
This last principle should not be overlooked. Disney recognized that perfecting guest experience is a never ending endeavor. You simply can't design and implement a new guest experience and walk away. All guest experiences require on-going tweaks and changes to attain perfection.
As design thinking practitioners, we would all do ourselves a great service by taking into consideration Mickey's ten commandments when embarking on the design of our next guest or customer experience.
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