Walt Disney: The World’s First

UX Designer
Attention to detail, a focus on immersion, and the desire constantly
improve his products made Walt Disney one of the earliest
designers of user experience.

Article No :1083 | September 9, 2013 | by Joseph Dickerson

I'm a huge fan of the Walt Disney park experience, and my family
has traveled to Walt Disney World and Disneyland multiple times.
The service we’ve received has always been exceptional, and I
return from every visit with at least one extra-special memory.

The reason the Disney experience is so consistently good is a focus

on quality, detail, and the customer. For the Walt Disney Company,
that focus came from the man whose name is above the door.

Walt Disney was an innovator, a creative force, and a brilliant

businessman. But even more than that, I consider Walt Disney the
first user experience designer, for reasons I will explain.

It’s Always Been About the Experience

The key to the Disney Park experience is immersion: everything is

designed down to the exact detail. Cast members are trained on
how to treat customers with very specific instructions on how to do
even the minutest actions, like waving and smiling.

Where there was once orange groves and swampland, there are
now virtual worlds that guests can explore. A manufactured
wonderland created with one goal in mind: to entertain and bring
joy to visitors.

I first realized that Disney was a user experience pioneer as I was

watched a video of him introducing “The Florida Project” to the
world—a project that became Walt Disney World. At one point,
Disney described the plan for the Experimental Prototype
Community of Tomorrow (or EPCOT) as “an experimental prototype
that is always in the state of becoming, a place where the latest
technology can be used to improve the lives of people.” If that isn’t
what UX is in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.
He said this in 1966.

Design like Walt

In building out the Disney theme parks, Walt Disney and his deign
team (which he named Imagineers) established many best practices
that we user experience designers can follow as well. Here are some
of them:

Make special moments: Disney and his team had a sharp focus
on creating a unique experience that guests could not get anywhere
else. This focus on making as many special moments as possible
resulted in happy (and repeat) customers. Human beings retain bad
memories more than good, so providing happy moments results in
people revisiting in a desire to relive or recapture those special
moments.

Always be plussing: Disney was never completely satisfied. He

always asked for more, always pushed his team to bring more to the
table. He called this "plussing," incrementally improving details and
elements of an experience. It wasn't "adding more stuff"—which so
many companies do—it was making a good experience better;
making sure the sound effects on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride
were loud enough to rattle the riders; making sure that the Tiki Birds
were able to have dozens of different gestures, not just ten. It was
aspirational, and I think it’s the right way to approach design.
Imagine if all designers and developers did their work with this type
of attitude.

Give customers options: Walt didn't design one different locale

with the original Disneyland: he made four of them, each with a
different theme and different experiences. By doing so he was able
to appeal to more people, and also allow for people to either stay in
one "land" (such as Adventureland) for an entire visit, or use the
"hub" to quickly jump from there to Tommorowland, or another
area.
 Image courtesy Frank Horst

You can see this idea reflected in countless different UIs today
(different views, different ways of searching, different options for
advanced users, etc.). It may seem obvious today, but Disney came
up with the idea and did it first.

Fix things that don't work: The grand opening of Disneyland was,
in many respects, a disaster. They ran out of food, rides broke down,
counterfeit tickets were being used to get into the park, and the
asphalt sidewalks had not finished curing in many places. Though
I'm pretty sure there was some yelling involved, Disney met with his
team, did a postmortem, and fixed things. We need to follow that
example, be self-conscious and objective about our designs, and fix
what isn’t working.

Take risks: As briefly noted above, Disney sunk a tremendous

amount of his own money in two projects: a full-length animated
film called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Disneyland. Both
projects brought him to the brink of losing it all, and both projects
were huge successes. We need to take risks with what we design,
and “aim for the fence” just like Disney did, because great risk also
brings great reward.

Hire smart people: Disney surrounded himself with incredibly

talented people and let them do their thing. Though he had to
approve almost all the details, he knew that he needed top-notch
people to execute his vision and to bring new perspectives to the
table. Follow Disney’s lead when it comes to building your team.

Direction like this convinces me that Disney was the world's first UX
designer.
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Innovate: Disney innovated both filmmaking and resort

experiences, creating the multi-plane camera for film and a complex
series of animatronic robots for his parks. He could have gone the
safe route and not pushed the envelope, but he did, and we all
benefited. Where can you innovate in your design work? What new
ideas or interactions can you bring to the table?

Use data to make things better (and maximize profits):

Disney looked at traffic patterns and sales data from his parks to
change things. Sold out of ice cream in Frontierland last week?
Double the number of ice cream stands there this week. Too many
people in line for Splash Mountain? Redesign the queue to make
sure that the people have extra shade and fans. Disney was one of
the first people to look at analytical data to influence business
decisions. Like Walt, UX professionals should leverage analytical
data to inform their understanding of users and supplement
qualitative user research.

Test, refine, then test again: Disney sent friends and family on
rides like Jungle Cruise before they opened to elicit feedback and
fine-tune the experience. It's exactly what we do as user experience
professionals, and he did it 50 years ago.

Mickey’s 10 Commandments

Imagineering President Marty Sklar formally documented some

of Disney’s advice and direction for his team, naming them
“Mickey’s 10 Commandments.” Like the best practices detailed
above, Disney applied these principles every day, and they are
applicable to much of what we do in UX:
1. Know your audience: "Don't bore people, talk down to
them, or lose them by assuming that they know what you
know." This is absolutely necessary in UX design—without a deep
understanding of your users you can't create a solution that solves
their problems or adds value to their lives.

2. 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 users, making the designs you create
more appropriate and helpful.

3. 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 UX, not just when explaining your final design
solution to stakeholders, but also in your designs themselves—
especially if you’re trying to describe an offering to new customers.

4. 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. Very good advice, and
when designing a "stepped" process providing a 'weenie' to follow
will result in lower abandon rates and increased customer
satisfaction.

5. Communicate with visual literacy: "Make good use of all

the non-verbal ways of communication—color, shape, form,
texture." We are currently having a big debate in the UX design
community about skeumorphism (the use of real-world visual
metaphors in a user experience) and this commandment aligns with
the argument advocating such an approach. Skeumorphism done
well helps people learn new experiences because of the visual cues
that remind them of real-world metaphors reflected in the design. Of
course, skeumorphism done badly is ... well, pretty awful and
unhelpful.

6. 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." Cognitive overload is one of
the major issues that can occur when a UI is "overdesigned" with
too many options. This commandment is great advice to avoid that
type of situation.

7. 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." This is information
architecture 101, and direction like this convinces me that Disney
was the world's first user experience designer.

8. 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.
When designing, don’t look at brand as a separate thing to be
applied at the end—it’s a crucial part of the total experience.

9. 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."
The concepts of gamification and immersive experiences are direct
descendants of ideas like this.

10. 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 less applicable to UX design, but an
absolute golden rule when it comes to process and service design.
Always do your best, follow your process and deliver quality.

Keep Moving Forward

As noted above, Walt Disney famously said that he wanted his parks
to never be finished—that he wanted it to evolve and grow over
time. He said the key is to always keep moving forward, to make the
good better, to continue to improve things, and to strive to make
things better.
This isn't just a great philosophy for user experience professionals to
develop, it reminds us all to keep moving forward.