The Trick of the Longer Walk
Some schemes can be quite elaborate. For instance, one airport discovered that, if planes parked further away so that people had to walk longer to baggage claim, they complained less about waiting for their bags once they got there. They were happier moving along than idling at the carousel, even if the total wait time was the same. Can you think of other situations in which people could be tricked into feeling less impatient?
When tenants complained their building's elevators were too slow, the owners skipped the costly engineering and simply hung mirrors beside the doors. The grumbling stopped. The elevators were no faster — but now people were busy fixing their hair and sneaking glances at strangers instead of counting the seconds.
Key concepts
- Occupied Versus Unoccupied Time
- Time spent doing something feels much shorter than time spent doing nothing — the airport converted idle standing into occupied walking, and occupied time barely registers as waiting.
- The Agony Of Idleness
- Standing still with nothing to do is the most painful wait — most frustration at a carousel isn't the minutes but the helpless idling, exactly what the longer walk removed.
- Perceived Wait Time
- How long a wait feels versus how long it lasts — service designers manage perception (occupy people, set expectations) because the feeling, not the stopwatch, drives complaints.
- Expectation Management
- A wait shorter than expected delights; longer than promised infuriates — even for the identical duration; promise 20 minutes and deliver 15 beats promising 10.
What to know
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01
Occupying a wait beats shortening it — the same minutes felt acceptable while walking and intolerable while idling, so the cheapest fix is often not to reduce a wait but to fill it.
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