I have been to Disneyland
only twice: Once, in 1957, as a boy too young to remember much more
than fright at the sight of alligators swimming toward our boat for
the sole purpose of eating me, followed by water buffalo approaching us in hopes of dessert. The second visit came in 1988 when
Nancy and I took Ashton and Elspeth to visit the park while I
attended an industry conference nearby.
I was working in an
advanced product research group at the time, and having been primed
by intensive inquiry into such topics as creativity, user interface
design, error handling, etc., my experience at Disneyland once again
caught me entirely by surprise: Disneyland is actually a dreadful place to
visit. Imagine saving up precious vacation time to visit a super-crowded place to pay for the privilege of standing in
line, enduring heat and glare, noise and -- above all -- garbage.
If anyone were to describe
such a place without naming it, and then ask whether I wished to go
there, my refusal would originate not in my brain, but my autonomic
nervous system. On the other hand, my reflexes would respond
enthusiastically at the mere mention of “Disneyland.”
What makes the difference?
The answer: Good design.
Of course effective promotion is also important. Cruise lines, for
example, seldom advertise itineraries in terms of the low incidence
of various disasters and illnesses to which passengers may be
exposed; instead, they follow the well known adage: “Sell the
sizzle instead of the steak” -- let the aroma and the crackling of
juices dripping into the flames beneath the grill play upon the
senses, and all the work of selling is done.
The importance of
expectation can hardly be overestimated in terms of visitor response
to Disneyland or anything else; nevertheless, it is ultimately the
experience with the thing desired that matters most. And in terms of
our visit to Disneyland, it was the genius inherent in its design
that entirely captured my imagination. The imaginative ways in which
lines were configured remains a marvel of diversion from the reality
of boredom induced by waiting. Noise and everything else are
features of the park exploited in one way or another, but, to my
mind, the penultimate design achievement focused on garbage.
My
fascination began with the realization that no trash was in evidence,
and yet almost everyone was eating something, purchasing food, or
just finishing a snack. The eating alone would have produced enough
used cups, plates, plastic forks, and half-eaten hot dogs to
transform the Magic Kingdom into a dump within a couple of days. In
thinking about the garbage problem that must have confronted park
designers, these possible solutions came to mind:
Fail to recognize
the problem
Ignore it
Prevent it
Allow
it and remove it
Turn it into an
asset
Failure to identify a
problem usually results from insufficient homework. Lack of
imagination, insufficient experience, too little time, ignorance of
the creative process, and other factors can cripple a design project
from the outset.
Ignoring a problem is
always dangerous, but sometimes the wisest thing to do. Few
decisions are more momentous, and require the best wisdom and
greatest integrity that can be brought to bear on the situation.
Some artifacts or deliverables can be improved over time
(iteratively) while other products offer only one chance to “get it
right.”
Preventing garbage at
Disneyland would have turned a world-class amusement park into
something akin to a living room -- not synonymous with magic or fun
in my experience.
Alternatively,
the design might have sought to constrain eating and drinking to
specified areas in order to facilitate trash management. Such an
approach could have created things like rules, making trash-handling
not only visible, but prominent. Imagine a policing effort, complete
with penalties for infractions and rewards for more responsible
behavior. Instead of stepping into a magic world where Mary Poppins
utters a sentence and clutter magically disappears, visitors would
have been confronted with infrastructure. Regardless of what such a
park might have offered, its spell would have been broken. Real
magic takes care of trash all by itself.
Design
activity at this level is informed and responsible, but unimaginative
because the original problem remains not only visible, but prominent.
Successful design transforms problems into assets, woven into the
design so deftly that without them the whole design falls apart.
It
seemed to me that two simple things made garbage-handling in the
Magic Kingdom truly ingenious:
First,
every “elf” with a broom and dust pan wore a polo shirt with
Disneyland
emblazoned on it. Second, every elf smiled. As a result, wherever
trash appeared outside of where it belonged, Disneyland
and magic were already on the scene to take care of it. In the real
world, smiles are almost never associated with the creation of trash,
and whenever an accident occurs, resulting in something to clean up,
all the fun stops.
Since
my experience at Disneyland, I can't claim to have actually been a
better designer, but I believe I've had a clearer idea of what design
and development ought to achieve. It's still easy to feel threatened
by design problems. It's easy to label a problem as a problem and
thus keep it in tact throughout design and implementation.
The
name we give to a thing is a declaration of what we intend to do with
it, a statement of how we intend to act toward it. For a problem to
undergo the transformation that is part of truly creative design, we
have to find another name for it. This renaming is the essence of
creative design. To achieve it we have to be believing: We have to
believe that the design problems we face are not necessarily inimical
to our objectives; that they are, instead, assets.
In
most cases, the destructive thing about such problems is the way we
treat them. We have to believe that solutions will present
themselves; that with all the knowledge, imagination, time, labor,
and patience we can focus on the task, problems can be transformed.
And we have to be open to the probability that really creative
solutions will be simple, even inexpensive -- like the cost of a
smile and a polo shirt with a logo on it.
