Guest Experience Rules! A WHITE PAPER THAT DARES TO TELL IT ALL, APPROXIMATELY
by Peter iNova, Creative Director of Metavision The notion of a themed entertainment has been around for thousands of years. Romans flooded the Coliseum and staged naval battles in it for fun. They even invented the word "Thema" to mean "fun in highly decorated areas giving added value to amusingly prepared experiences," or some such. Other things they did with the Coliseum are now considered politically incorrect, but the point is made.
Recent years have witnessed a public burn-out on the term "themed (anything)" and the instant it became a catch-all phrase in place of "well thought-out, well designed, intriguing, comfortable, aesthetic and memorable" its days were numbered. Its true value only remains to present a sense of a specific period, design and/or style that supports the experience being conveyed. I vote that all other uses of the word "themed" be taken out into the alley and mugged.
In the intervening decades leading to the present, a few rules have floated to the surface that will help anyone designing a modern Guest Experience. The Romans would have recognized most of them. You may, too.
- Rule #1
- It's the Guest, the whole Guest and nothing but the Guest.
Whether you design your attraction in terms of a Guest Experience or not, your Guest will be having one.
Think about this: (Based on a true life experience)
You're a guest who is currently standing in line for XYZ. The ads have said XYZ is the best thing since the dawn of entertainment, but right now you are staring at a wall with a crummy painting of fake brick on it. You are hot, there is no rest room nearby but you wish there were, and you have been standing here for thirty seven minutes already.
Are you having a Guest Experience yet?
Of course you are.
Not only that, but by the time you actually arrive at the heart of XYZ the chances are great that you will have developed a Guest ATTITUDE instead. One that will come up later, to your friends. Mine just did.
In other words, the Guest Experience, like the physics of matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be channeled and shaped.
Word of mouth advertising is the best advertising an attraction can have if it is positive. Like the Guest Experience, word of mouth will happen on its own and the only way it can become positive is if of the attraction satisfies, delights, respects and enhances the guest's time spent with it.
This document plays with the core concepts that are necessary considerations to creatively channeling the Guest Experience into positive word of mouth advertising.
The nature of an attraction can be nearly anything. It can be as small as a shop or as large as a theme park. It can sell you, feed you, please you, thrill you or give you a chance to win. No matter what it does, your guest is the customer that gives it a reason to exist in the first place.
That individual will arrive at your entrance bringing a lifetime of experiences, knowledge, information, cultural myths and beliefs along with them. Recognizing this, Guest Experience designers can predict certain things about the guest and start channeling the experience towards a positive goal.
- Rule #2
- Precondition me.
Guests arrive with so much in the way of extraneous mental baggage, not to mention camcorders, kids and a stroller, that no individual state of mind shows up perfectly prepared for your attraction the way you might wish.
An arsenal of tools and techniques exists to change all this. Architecture, service, involvement, distraction, interaction, attention to detail and solutions to predictable problems all can conspire to put guests in a Particularly Good Mood. Accommodating wheel chairs is now appropriately mandatory, accommodating valuables, kids and strollers can be a good thing, too.
Part of the preconditioning process is the environment. Initially, the most obvious part of this will be the architecture and decor of the attraction. Great thought is given to these design disciplines because they have the ability to inspire, elevate mood, set time, place and historical reference.
Whether the decor is authentic, impressionistic or in between, a certain portion of the audience may take delight in showing their friends how fake it is.
(Another true story) I watched a continuous supply of tourists queue through a highly themed room decorated with marble pillars and walls. They tested every surface with knuckle raps for the entire duration of the line. It sounded like an amateur bongo contest. I don't know how it started but it showed exactly how cheap the wooden marble pillars really were to everybody in that part of the attraction. The knocking caught on and was passed back to each new guest and as the line progressed the fakeness of the decoration became the dominant topic of conversation. For all I know, it's still happening right this second.
Either building more substantial faux pillars, giving the queue line something else worth focusing on, or keeping the tempting decor out of reach would have avoided this negative impression. You have to think of everything, every surface, and every service.
Another part of the preconditioning process are The Distractions. These are data or environmental cues that swerve a guest's focus away from themselves and into the premise of the attraction. They can be a piece of information, an orientation media element, a subtle audio ambiance, an interesting display-- nearly anything that pulls the guest into the special tone of the attraction. Often a combination of these elements, they must be consciously focused at the right moment and place in the preconditioning process.
- Rule #3
- Thou Shalt Not Bewilder.
Never allow the guest to become needlessly confused. You may, for dramatic purposes misdirect, build anticipation, keep them guessing, startle them or make it impossible for people to predict what's coming next, but if you do something that leaves them lost and drifting, you will be losing comfort points in the Guest Experience.
One may safely assume that the guest is ready to learn a few things if that will help them to enjoy the attraction. The overwhelming majority of people can learn by casual discovery much faster than they can by lecture. Maybe that's why television works.
If there are vital elements that absolutely must be absorbed verbally in order to derive pleasure from the experience, the attraction is already skating on thin ice. If the attraction is presented in English and you only speak Japanese, it should still work pretty well for you.
I've actually had this experience in reverse. Metavision designed and produced the preshow elements to an attraction in Japan. This was media that helped to set up the back story for a high concept simulator ride. While standing in line, whether the line moved fast or slow, the Japanese language elements had to carry the story forward, set up a dramatic tension and prepare guests to expect certain experiences. The effective result came from a coordinated series of on-screen actors in a video phone telecommunication context supported with lots of graphics, remote camera views, charts, data and animations that were being passed back and forth over a computer network. Monitors that tapped into that network just happened to be placed here and there along the way. As the drama unfolded the actor's concerns were being illustrated so many different ways that any viewer could follow the general idea no matter what their native language.
Rather than confuse a guest with too much homework, infuse the guest with the essential elements the attraction is themed around. Osmosis, whether mental or physical, is one of the best transfer mechanisms in all of nature. It's how we all learned to speak. Can we invent the term "osmotiviator?"
- Rule #4
- Model. Model. Model.
As "Location. Location. Location." is to real estate, the process of planning is to entertaining attractions.
Today it is common to make physical models of architectural elements but new technologies make it possible to actually walk through a proposed design before the plans are anywhere near final and before a physical model is ever made. This is the new capability of Venue Simulation and it is such a useful tool that it changes the very way complex ideas are planned and refined.
If this white paper has a basic useful new idea that you have not heard elsewhere, this is it:
Venue Simulation solves problems, saves money, demonstrates ideas and makes better thought-out attractions possible.
Today, we can walk you through your venue as it evolves from rough proposal to final design in a special theater that surrounds you with a computer graphic version of the plan. A whole lot more intuitive than watching a design on a computer monitor, this theater is the IMC, the Immersive Media Center, and unless you experience it for yourself, you won't know how amazingly powerful a visualization tool it is.
Imagine sitting in a modest sized conference room with a 6 ft. by 20 ft. screen wrapped around you 120°. On that seamless screen a nearly photographic, realistic three dimensional model of complex architecture, decor, landscape and sky are combined with animated vehicles, guests, show elements and special effects in a smoothly moving, interactive display.
You can go anywhere in the simulation, see it from any angle and change any part of it that needs to be redesigned. Your banker (who can't read plans) can look at it and see where the money's going. Your safety engineer (who does read plans) can spot the shut off valve that was placed where it would poke extra tall tour guides in the eye, something that wasn't obvious from the blueprint. Alternate designs can be quickly reviewed, Guest Experience can be refined to an unprecedented degree and project costs can be controlled because decision makers can quickly perceive what is really going on for a change.
The high resolution image is about 80% sharper than a movie (no kidding) and it fills your peripheral vision so well that you have the distinct impression of being IN the model and you relate to it as a completely natural environment. It takes a supercomputer to achieve this level of realism, but since we already have one, that is not a problem. (Metavision developed the IMC's core technology and systems that use it are sold worldwide through its sister company, Panoram Technologies.)
By immersing designers, vision makers and decision makers in the IMC, mistakes are avoided and designs are opened to possibilities that never would have occurred until the project was built. One customer saved an estimated £4 million ($1.47 = £1.00) by spending just a dozen sessions in a Panoram venue in England. Several major oil companies have been saving millions of dollars every month using these displays and that high-ticket car you want was designed partly on a Panoram screen.
The Immersive Media Center is an example of how Guest Experience goes beyond the final ticket paying customer. To us, the developer of an attraction is the guest and the experience that individual or group encounters is its own form of Guest Experience.
- Rule #5
- Magic Happens. Make it so.
Guests arrive willing to suspend their disbelief. To a point. They will, under certain circumstances, allow violations of reality:
- A projection in place of a live situation.
- A well presented theatrical effect in place of a dangerous reality.
- An environment that is out of scale.
- A physical phenomenon that is ordinarily impossible.
- A ghost that is convincingly real.
- Magic.
- Spectacle.
Everyone knows magic can happen under controlled circumstances. Since all attractions are controlled circumstances, it follows that anything that distracts from the magic is a Bad Thing. The magic is the sum total of the special quality that makes your attraction a "Must See" or "WOW" experience. Bonus points are given by guests according to a set chart of responses:
UTTERANCE POINTS IMPLICATION Gee = 1 None. No impact. Anything can get a "gee." Gosh = 2 A few extra customers show up Saturday. Hey! = 3 Several extra customers heard about it, trickled in. Omigosh! = 5 Customers tell their friends. Who tell theirs. Wow! = 8 Customers tell everybody they meet. Loudly. Holy Cow!! = 10 Stockholders covered. Career covered. Yess! Your results may vary. Local slang can modify the response names. There is a negative scale, but we don't even want to go there.
The magic that happens in your attraction will be as carefully placed there by good design, original concept and vision as it is by technical integrity, high quality media and superior physical execution.
Hey, that low bidder may not be your friend? Gee, I wonder why?
I feel that these two phases, dreaming up the magic and actually taking the responsibility to build it, are not things that can be given to two separate groups. The latter won't have the vision so they will make compromises without a deep understanding of the mission, the first won't need to take responsibility for making the vision practical so they will sell you anything that pleases you. I've seen it happen all over the world.
A poignant example of this can be seen in the contrast of work by architects who follow their projects to completion and those who don't. The ones with responsibility are the ones whose names you will recognize.
"Vision+responsibility" should have its own word, for the two concepts should not be separated.
("Visibility" was taken and "Responsion" doesn't cut it. So I solicit your feedback.)
What you really want is a team of people that include the vision, technology, craftsmanship and responsibility to make it happen. We have all seen things that seem to be the less than magical results of "Design by Committee".
A team is the opposite of a committee, so the rule might be better phrased as "Magic happens through teamwork."
- Rule #6
- Hide something.
Surprise, novelty, originality and comedy are carefully channeled elements in superior Guest Experiences. Preconditioning can set up one expectation that is transcended by the unexpected. Smiles and laughter are money in the bank. The worse thing that can be done is to tell guests exactly what is going to happen and then have that come true exactly on schedule.
In the best crafted attractions the surprises are so thick and plentiful that people leave with the feeling that they couldn't have seen it all in a single visit.
When the surprises are inelegantly orchestrated, rule #3 takes over.
The opposite of hiding is revealing. Rule #6B is "Reveal something."
Many, many attractions are built around the plot, "Here we go, all systems nominal. Oops! Something just went terribly wrong!" The public has seen this so many times that people joke about it.
Those same folks have seen "Boy meets Girl..." so many times they joke about that, too, but carefully manifesting plot turns and twists is a continuous exercise in hiding, revealing and surprising.
How about having something go terribly right for a change...
- Rule #7
- Show me the money.
The guest is thinking:
Immerse me in something I couldn't have dreamed up on my own.
Make me believe I've gone somewhere and some when...
And show me the money.
Make me feel like you spared no expense to delight me.
Don't EVER let me see you cutting items out of the budget, for I am the Guest and I am strictly not interested in seeing how much money you saved yourself on my behalf.
Remember that as soon as attraction designers say "All we have to do is..." all the Guest has to do is tell their friends "You didn't miss anything."
This idea has been around for a long time. I stood in a baroque cathedral a few years ago dazzled by the extensive use of gold in all the statuary and decoration. Until the guide explained that the whole cathedral had maybe two kilos of gold in the entire place. (Less than $20,000 worth.) It was gold leaf, and the statues were wood underneath. The point is that the Guest Experience designers, hundreds of years ago knew exactly how to show me the money... without going overboard.
- Rule #8
- It only exists if it works.
Maintain it. The crew of techno jocks that keep it running are the most important, cost-effective workers you have. The very pretty girl turning people away from the entrance of the attraction that is closed today with a radiant smile and a lilting, "Sor-ree!" is the most expensive person on your payroll.
If it's supposed to work, make sure it is working RIGHT NOW! The guest sees every non-functioning element through a filter that is constantly whispering, "I don't have all day and I may never pass this way again."
That little sign you post outside your attraction that tells folks which ride or show isn't operating today - for whatever reason - is what your first grade teacher told you never to give her: an Excuse.
- Rule #9
- Let me take it with me.
Of course, nearly every attraction has its version of a souvenir shop and retail opportunities, but today the world of guests carries camcorders as standard equipment. (Note to retail outlet and gift shop buyers: Stock every conceivable format of film, digital camera card and video tape, even a few of those cassettes the pros use, they run out, too.)
No image carried home on a video camcorder will have anywhere near the impact as being there, which is exactly what the guest will say over and over to his friends as he narrates the video of his visit to your attraction.
This is Good For You. Guests with video camera are not ripping you off, stealing your attraction's thunder and taking it back home to show their friends how bad it was. In fact, if the attraction isn't thunderful, they won't even bother to show the tape at all. Allowing people to video tape inside your attraction is good Word Of Mouth Advertising. It's just a mouth with a lens in it.
Unless, of course, the operation of a video camera is going to get in the way of safety or other Guest's Experiences...
There are some things you can do to enhance guest and TV news crew video coverage of your attraction. Make your displays look correct to a video camera from the outset. In this country that means 30 frames per second. There is no reason to allow 24 frame per second film media in your attraction unless you strictly don't want it to look good to a video camera, CNN, the local video press or your own PR video. 24 frame movies and 72 Hz computer monitors appear to be full of horizontal flutter when captured on video.
Write this down:
All media will be 30 or 60 frames per second and/or will look correct to a video camera.
Now write that sentence into all future proposals.
(Unless, of course, you are in a part of the world that uses PAL or SECAM video systems which are 25 frames per second.)
- Rule #10
- Say Thank You. And mean it.
What kind of thank you? An amusing sign, a mailed special offer, a coupon, a refreshing vista, a little joke, one more clever display... any of these may do the job. Dumping the guest into the cheapest-looking exit probably won't.
You may be thankful the guest spent time and money with you, but the key here is that the Guest must understand that you meant it. Now that would be a good experience.
...and with that, this tirade is closed. Besides, with ten entries, the tablets are full up.
Thank you for listening. I really mean it.