Spatial Cues Come Before Signs
In a wayfinding scheme, if spatial cues still start with adding more signs, the result is often plenty of signage while the space itself still gives no sense of direction.
Article Experience & Interaction Automotive & Mobility
Waiting Is Part of What a Brand Says
When waiting is treated as empty time in a service journey, people are often left with anxiety or irrelevant information. A more considered approach defines the one thing the brand should help people accomplish while they wait, then builds it into the waiting experience.
Key points
- Within a service journey, waiting should no longer be treated as empty time.
- Left unaddressed, the same pattern repeats: people spend their wait absorbing anxiety or irrelevant information.
- Start instead by defining the one thing the brand should help people accomplish while they wait.
- Build that choice into the waiting experience, with experience and onsite teams working together.
- From then on, assess the experience against one question: by the end of the wait, have people accomplished that one thing, beyond simply passing the time?
01What to Decide First About Waiting
The first step in improving waiting is to give it a purpose. Within a service journey, the sequence of decisions does more than wording to determine whether people are left with anxiety or irrelevant information.
If the team starts by rewriting messages, it may believe the waiting experience has improved while people continue to face the same anxiety or irrelevant information.
Define the one thing the brand should help people accomplish while they wait. Until then, waiting is still being treated as empty time.
02Which Decisions Must Come Later
Some decisions must come later. Discussing channels, visuals or scripts before defining what the brand should help people accomplish simply preserves the idea of waiting as empty time in a different form.
Those later decisions matter, but they must follow the earlier choice. Otherwise, the team will keep addressing the symptoms: anxiety or irrelevant information during the wait.
03Sequence Is Part of the Design
The sequence has three steps: define what the brand should help people accomplish while they wait, design the waiting experience around it, then allow variations in external messaging.
Reverse that sequence and the waiting experience may look full of activity while still being treated as empty time.
04Make the Sequence Explicit
The waiting experience plan must make the sequence clear. Anyone reading it should understand what has been decided and what cannot yet be changed.
During service process reviews, use the waiting experience plan to check whether a campaign has disrupted the sequence.
05When to Review the Waiting Experience
Experience and onsite teams share responsibility. When an exception breaks the sequence, return to the waiting experience plan and revise the rules, rather than improvising a new waiting message in a group chat.
Review just one question: by the end of the wait, have people accomplished that one thing, beyond simply passing the time? Only when this can be answered is the sequence working in practice.
Framework
Four Layers of the Waiting Experience
From principles that cannot be compromised to tools people can use in practice, each layer answers one question, keeping waiting from becoming empty time again.
L1The Task
This layer defines which principles of the waiting experience cannot be compromised.
L2What Not to Fill the Time With
This layer turns the waiting experience into verifiable conditions.
L3When the Wait Runs Long
This layer defines how the waiting experience may vary across situations.
L4Owner
This layer puts the design of the wait in the hands of those delivering it, with clear exceptions.
Note: This diagram is a conceptual framework. It explains a way of thinking and is not statistical data. Source: Qingmei Future Insights.
Recommended actions
Action 01
Start from the site
Identify the moments in the service journey when the design of the wait comes into play. Start there, rather than rewriting an approach that treats waiting as empty time.
Action 02
Keep it to one page
Let the design of the wait replace lengthy explanations. Keep only what supports the one thing the brand needs to achieve while people wait.
Action 03
Judge it by one question
At each process review, ask one question: when the wait ends, have people accomplished that one thing, or simply endured the time? Without an answer, no real decision has been made.
Action 04
Name the owner
The experience team and on-site staff must own this together. Without someone responsible for maintaining it, the design of the wait will quietly change when conflicts arise.
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