HXD 2019

Why People Will Pay Hundreds of Dollars to Wait Two Hours in Orlando for a 90 Second Ride, But Are Frustrated by Healthcare

A theme park is about narrative – and the power of the principles of theme park design to engage, inform, motivate, and inspire action, are all equally applicable to the design of systems of care delivery: patient activation, treatment plan adherence, health-related behavior change, affinity, and loyalty.

Whether the narrative is about the quest of Harry Potter to vanquish Voldemort or about a quest to get a chronic illness stabilized, the scenarios are remarkably similar. There’s feelings and challenges to be managed; there’s vocabulary and technical skills to be mastered.

But theme park design is also about safety, organizational capacity, throughput, compressed time sequences, human resources, inventory management, and quality. It’s about performance consistency, managing transitions, being prepared for common deviations from the structured experience, and acknowledging the human factors for both patients and the professionals who are providing their care.

"Experience Management" means more than just customer service, and can have influence and impact beyond patient satisfaction scores, including optimizing patient access strategies, achieving better alignment around goals of care, improving efficiency and quality of clinical operations, and raising levels of professional/staff satisfaction.

This presentation seeks to share the principles of experience design in non-healthcare environments that share the challenge of 24/7, high volume, technology-enabled human performance focused on safety and outcomes -- including theme parks and resorts, museums and cultural attractions, and live events -- and show how they can be applied to, and successfully support, quality and performance objectives for 21st century healthcare. Using case studies, participants will learn how the basic principles of experience design can inform extraordinary transformation.