muddyrivers
Well-Known Member
I just finished reading a chapter in the Imagineering Story covering this and I think it is something most of Disney's top brass have lost sight of. Marty Sklar authored "Mickey's Ten Commandments":
- Know your audience: "Don't bore people, talk down to them, or lose them by assuming that they know what you know." This is an absolute necessity —without a clear understanding of your customers, you cannot create solutions that solve their problems or add value for them.
- Wear your guest's shoes: "Insist that designers, staff, and your board members experience your facility as visitors as often as possible." This approach increases the empathy your design team has for your customers, making the designs you create more appropriate and helpful. I once read a story about an Imagineer who walked around Walt Disney World on his knees to get a child’s perspective of the park.
- Organize the flow of people and ideas: "Use good storytelling techniques; tell good stories not lectures; lay out your exhibit with a clear logic." Storytelling is a vitally important skill in CX, not just when explaining your final design solution to stakeholders, but also in your designs themselves—especially if you are trying to describe an offering to new customers.
- Create a weenie: "Lead visitors from one area to another by creating visual magnets and giving visitors rewards for making the journey." Imagineers called these magnets “weenies”–objects that are large enough to see from a distance and interesting enough to draw their attention. (If you have ever visited a Disney park, you probably have noticed the weenie in the form of Sleeping Beauty’s or Cinderella’s castles for example.) Very good advice, and when designing a "stepped" process providing a 'weenie' to follow will result in lower abandon rates and increased customer satisfaction.
- Communicate with visual literacy: "Make good use of all the non-verbal ways of communication—color, shape, form, texture." Think about your local Apple store, it has a clean, glassy, modern environment that compliments the technology. How about your favorite weekend get-away, is it furnished with warm colors and soft appointment to make it more inviting?
- Avoid overload: "Resist the temptation to tell too much, to have too many objects; don't force people to swallow more than they can digest, try to stimulate and provide guidance to those who want more." Simply put, keep it simple.
- Tell one story at a time: "If you have a lot of information, divide it into distinct, logical, organized stories; people can absorb and retain information more clearly if the path to the next concept is clear and logical." Nothing loses a customer more quickly than information overload. If you are following the first commandment, knowing your audience, you can custom tailor the information to suit their needs.
- Avoid contradiction: "Clear institutional identity helps give you the competitive edge. The public needs to know who you are and what differentiates you from other institutions they may have seen." Disney thought about branding before most people even knew what the term meant. It should start with your design, brand is not a separate mechanism that is applied at the end—it is an intricate part of the total experience.
- For every ounce of treatment, provide a ton of fun: "How do you woo people from all other temptations? Give people plenty of opportunity to enjoy themselves by emphasizing ways that let people participate in the experience and by making your environment rich and appealing to all senses." Happy customers have a tendency to spend more, entertain them and differentiate their experience in the process.
- Keep it up: "Never underestimate the importance of cleanliness and routine maintenance, people expect to get a good show every time, people will comment more on broken and dirty stuff." This is an absolute golden rule when it comes to process and service design. Do your best, follow your process, and deliver quality every time.
