99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-49- Queue Theory and Design

Episode Date: March 9, 2012

In the US, it’s called a line. In Canada, it’s often referred to as a line-up. Pretty much everywhere else, it’s known as a queue. My friend Benjamen Walker is obsessed with queues. He keeps sending me YouTube clips of … Continue reading →

We get support from UC Davis, a globally ranked university, working to solve the world's most pressing problems in food, energy, health, education, and the environment. UC Davis researchers collaborate and innovate in California and around the globe to find transformational solutions. It's all part of the university's mission to promote quality of life for all living things. Find out more at 21stCentry.ucdavis.edu. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In the US, they're called lines in Canada. They're called lineups sometimes. And I was once interviewed live on Canadian National Radio,

and they started talking about lineups, and we had a conversation about police for five minutes until I realized what they started talking about lineups and we had a conversation about police for five minutes until I realized what they were talking about. But pretty much everywhere else, it's known as a cue. I like cue the best. Yeah, me too. That's Benjamin Walker. He's obsessed with cues.

He keeps sending me emails with links to YouTube videos of cues you have. Psychology students filming their surreptitious cue experiments. You have Asian road rage videos. You've got people filming fights that break out in Q's. Unless you're gonna physically move me, nothing's gonna happen. So understand that I'm not getting out of this. Understand. Then none of them are gonna stop this. And you can understand. Then I'm gonna stop being in the house. I like to call YouTube the Q-hole. And when I found this lecture by Dr. Q, I immediately made an appointment to go and see him.

I'm Dick Larson. I'm a professor at MIT. And I guess my nickname is Dr. Q. Dick Larson is a Q theorist. Just about every day we experience Q-ing in some aspect of our lives. Dick Larson studies the mathematical and psychological models of Q-ing systems. Unfortunately, oftentimes too many Q's on a day-to-day basis. Dr. Q's able to put his professional knowledge to work everywhere he goes.

I have my own ways through supermarkets, particularly if you have to go to the Delay counter and get a number, you run to the Delay counter as soon as you go into the supermarket, get your number, and then you start walking around and doing the regular shopping and you watch how the numbers go drop down. And then as soon as it gets close to yours, then you go back. So that's a cue that's been avoided because it's a cue within a cue. So I have little little ideas like this. Dr. Cue hates waiting in line as much as you and I do,

but he does respect the well-designed queue. The Maccabellan experts of Cue design are people in the Disney world and the Disney properties. They have mastered the idea that people can be happy waiting 40 minutes in line for a four-minute ride. I think it's fantastic. Disney is very serious about QDesign. They employ about 18 or so operations researchers. They call them Imagineers. These Imagineers have mastered the golden rules of QDes design. The first is to keep your customers entertained while they wait in line.

They're guests. Think that the amusement has started before they actually sit on the ride. They'll have video screens along the Q route with games, and if the lines are getting really ugly, a park manager will send in a sweaty man and a full-body costume. And so they're entertained and they're amused while they're waiting in line. The second rule, manage expectations. Always manage your expectations such that you'll deliver above the performance you say.

So for instance, if the line says you can anticipate 45 minute wait if the line is out to this point, but really it might be only 35 minutes. So therefore, if you look at your watch in 35 minutes, you're getting on the line and the dad, you're in the mom and the two kids say, hey, we're 10 minutes ahead of schedule. So that's great.

You waited 35 minutes and you say, we just saved 10 minutes because we thought we're gonna have to wait for 45 minutes. Q-theories about a hundred years old now, but it wasn't until the 1950s that the profession really came into its own. After World War II, there was a burst of economic activity, a lot more high-rise buildings, high-rise hotels, and offices, and all of a sudden, owners of these buildings are getting complaints

about rush hour delays for elevators. In those days, of course, they didn't have microprocessors to optimize the movement of the elevators. Many of the elevators actually had humans as operators, as pilots, so to speak. So Russ A. Kauf, who was a professor at University of Pennsylvania, sent one of his research aids to New York City to check out these complaints about elevator delays. And indeed, he found out that there were rush hours for elevators, like eight to nine in the morning or five to six at night,

just like rush hour for cars. So he said, hmm, the traditional engineering approach. Dynamite this building, it start over again with twice as many elevator shafts, because you've got more demand than you have capacity in these rush hours. In my experience, engineers are a lot more crafty than that, but let's just go with it. But then in a stroke of genius, he said, well, maybe the problem is framed the wrong way. Maybe the problem isn't the 90 seconds of weight for the elevators.

Maybe the problem is the complaints about the 90 second weights for the elevators. And if we could reduce the complaints substantially, maybe we'll solve the problem. And then another stroke of genius, he said, well, what if you give somebody a distraction, a diversion? Let's try Florida ceiling mirrors next to all the elevators in an experimental building.

So you got the money, put the mirrors in, watched for a month, and guess what? The complaints dropped to near zero. A man who were wearing ties could adjust their ties, a woman could make sure their hair was organized okay. Or vice versa. Sometimes men and women were even seen to flirt occasionally through the reflection, I guess it's less provocative than night eye contact. The complaints dropped in their zero problem solve, the statistics of the delay unchanged. Ingenious. Mirrors won't work if McDonald's are whole foods, though.

Many fast food restaurants and most grocery stores use parallel cues, where there's a bunch of open lanes and you're forced to pick one and stick with it. The one next to you could be going faster for any number of reasons and it's totally frustrating, but you stay in your line and you play the hand you're dealt. But there's another way to do it. A single serpentine line that feeds all of the open registers.

It's first come, first served. It's a queue designed for equality and fairness. And when there's one line, both blatant and inadvertent queue jumping is minimized. We call them slips and skips. In American companies, they used to pride themselves on designing these more egalitarian queues. Wendy's is very proud that they're the first ones

in fast food that had the single-surpentine line. American Airlines is very proud. They claimed that they're the first ones that have single serpentine line in airports, although British air argues with them. They say, well, they got at the same time. They used to be a bank in New York called Chemical Bank, and they used to claim that they were the first ones to have that in their bank lobbies. And so there's a certain pride to getting rid of, in a written line jumping by slips and

skips by having the single serpentine line. But today, cue design is changing. More and more, we're encountering cues that are designed so that different levels of service can be provided to different groups of people. Priority cues and given certain people, priorities over others, you can see it in amusements like Disney, but more seriously, it occurs in some life and death situations like queuing for organ donation transplants. My hypothesis is that this design change is connected to the Q-rage that's becoming more and more commonplace

and available to watch for free on YouTube. And I also believe that understanding this new Q-theory will better help us understand the inequality and disparity that's on the rise in this country. Yeah, you might say, well, why should somebody with a lot of frequent firemiles get automatically bumped up to first class? As I found out, I recently was on some flights and therefore have to then escape the TSA queue for in airports. And I feel a little bit guilty about that. And just yesterday I did this twice.

And I felt a little bit guilty because there were like 30 people in line and I went right to the front of it. And I thought, hmm, why is this fair? Just because I fly a little bit more than the others do. And so I think your question is a deep one and requires some more thought and discussion. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Benjamin Walker and me Roman Mars. Do I have to tell you about Benjamin Walker again? Too much information from WFMU? Understand it will make your life better. This is a project of KALW91.7 local public radio in San Francisco and the American Institute

of Architects in San Francisco. This program is distributed by PRX, the public radio exchange making public radio more public find out more at PRX.org. This week and every week I am aided and abetted by Sam Greenspan working all the way over in Baltimore, Maryland, home of the third best city flag in the country. Fuck it up. It's a good one. You can find the show and like the show on Facebook. I tweet at Roman Mars.

Get you know, it's just catch up with us. And tell us your Q stories at 99%invisible.org.大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい大きい待ってみます待ってる 私たち待ってみます 待ってる 私たち待ってみます you