This was the queue design that got us into the game. We were brought on board to create two movies for the queue, or line at a theme park.

BOSA:  What does the queue look like?
Client:  It’s still in flux and just make the movies and they’ll drop them in.
BOSA:  It makes no sense to make a movie for an area that is not designed. The queue is an whole experience and each piece should fit perfectly.

The queue designs were delivered to us. In the movie, the garage where the Black Beauty car was built is a clean, sterile, high-tech lab. The queue was designed after this garage. More specifically: a plain white empty room. Pretty boring. On the walls in this design, there were inside jokes from the movie. This is where we had a to have a real conversation.

We asked the 10 executives in the room who had actually seen this movie. Be honest. Only half had.

BOSA proposed that, rather then play inside jokes from this movie that not many people had seen, perhaps we take a different approach. It’s an exciting film with intriguing characters. Let’s celebrate the movie! We pointed out that the queue (line) was divided into three rooms. Coming from cinematic development, we proposed, we take a cinematic approach to the queue. How about the first room is act one, the middle room act two, etc.? In the first room we get to know the characters and understand their needs. The second room is the “call to action”.

For us, we approach queue design as we do film story design. The viewer is in a story that evolves. There is one fundamental difference: in a film, the progression of a story is the passage of time. In a queue, it’s distance traveled. So, in a movie, something happens 30 minutes in, 45 minutes in, and so forth to the end. In a queue, we have something happen 30 meters in, and 45 meters in, and so forth.

With this approach, we’ve designed a dozen queues and they are one of the funnest things we do!