#queue theory

It’s December and the holiday season is officially upon us. The time of gift giving and receiving, hot chocolate, nights by the fire, A Christmas Story, Elf, and many, many, many, lines; or for grad school purposes queues. 

I haven’t had to stand or sit in a queue waiting to buy a Christmas present... yet, but I did recently stand in one for the Jimmy Kimmel Live show in Hollywood. Waiting in a queue for a show like Jimmy Kimmel Live is an expected part of a users’ experience and luckily for us we were entertained while waiting (and I don’t mean by all of the crazies that are up and down Hollywood Blvd.). I wouldn’t say it was a “well designed” queue, certainly not to the standards of Disney or even Six Flags, but it did make waiting less of a pain in the butt. 

In the podcast Queue Theory and Design (http://soundcloud.com/roman-mars/99-invisible-49-queue-theory) produced by 99% Invisible, Richard Larson, who is an expert in queue theory, describes two rules to follow when designing queues. The first rule is to keep your customers entertained while they wait in line. For Jimmy Kimmel we had three different queues to wait in: outside queue, security queue, and the inside queue. Entertainment was provided by a street rapper for the outside queue. He had his own boom box which had recorded beats on it and he would ask someone their name and create a rap out of it. Then he would proceed to ask for money. I don’t think it was “entertainment” the Jimmy Kimmel people planned as part of their queue but they did allow him to start at the beginning of the queue and work his way down. I didn’t see any other street act which interacted with the queue. The security line provided no entertainment. No surprise there. But the third queue, the inside one, played videos from previous Jimmy Kimmel shows. The videos were a way to entertain us and get us laughing. If there is one thing I learned from the show, it’s that if you don’t have a great audience, you don’t have a great show! 

The second rule Richard Larson mentions is to manage expectations. He gives the example of getting on a ride after waiting 35 minutes when you were quoted 40 minutes.   This was a rule the Jimmy Kimmel show fell short on. We had no idea how long the wait was going to be. NONE! it was somewhat frustrating but luckily I’m easily entertained so rule number one came in handy. 

 Larson also discusses priority queues which we see a lot of in airports. The Jimmy Kimmel show had one but it wasn’t based on your economic status because the tickets were free. It was based on whether or not you planned ahead time. Also, it didn’t get you out of waiting in the queue, you’re just closer to the beginning of the queue rather than the end. We got our “priority tickets” (that was their name which turned out to be really convenient for this post!) online, printed them out, and followed the instructions. We were supposed to be in line by the time stated on the tickets. If we weren’t there by that time then we would lose our priority tickets and have to go to the end of the general admission line. We made it to the line on time and had a great time at the show! It was so great that I can’t even remember the total time we stood in line.  

Got this book this week.