I made the yearly trek up to Cedar Point, which is probably one of the best roller coaster parks in the world. The rides there are pretty nuts, so we had a great time, but since I'm a web-oriented type I kept thinking: well, this is fun, but how do you make the user experience even better?
Unfortunately for us, the day we were able to free time from class and work and other obligations happened to be a pretty great day- low wind, low 70's. That meant more people in the park, which meant the dreaded lines problem.
Naturally, parks need to pack in as much people as possible given profit concerns and the physical limit of number of people comfortably allowed in the park at one time. So if you happen to head to a coaster park on any normal day, you're going to face some heavy lines- we lucked out with about a 1.25 hour wait for Top Thrill Dragster (amazing, as always), but other coasters like Millennium Force and the new Maverick were topping out at 2+ hours each.
The problem was that waiting sucked. Sucked. Top Thrill Dragster cost $25 million to build, but I bet the amount spent on the waiting area for that same ride isn't even on the same planet, much less in the same ballpark. When you think of it, why is this? You spend far more time waiting in line than you do on the actual ride. (Our roughly 1.25 hour wait for Top Thrill Dragster is pretty crazy when you realize that the entire ride is 17 seconds long.) Doesn't it make sense to really understand that waiting in line shares the same experience as riding the actual rides does? But most parks that I've been to completely miss this. They herd people through literally like cattle, complete with a maze of metal barriers and turn styles. Sometimes you'll get the opportunity to buy a $1.00 bag of candy or a $3 bottle of water, but even that is hit and miss depending on the ride. Why don't they add benches to let people sit every now and then? Why don't they add a few flat screen TVs that discuss the ride or, heaven forbid, show some clever entertainment while you wait? Cedar Point had a few DJ booths that could have been used but weren't. Why not even go out on a limb and add a few interactive games along the way? You spend, what, a few tens of thousand dollars on electronics or similar activities and you make an incredible difference in the visitor experience. Those tens of thousands of dollars is really nothing considering the initial investment of a new coaster. Otherwise you just have a line of halfway grumpy people waiting for something to happen, all the while likely thinking along the lines of "this sucks, this line is slow." Any time "this sucks" crosses the mind of a customer, warning bells should be going off in your head-- more importantly, you should see it as a way to improve yourself.
So why bring this up on a blog targeted towards web developers? Barring the whole real world aspect, roller coaster parks are pretty similar to a website. You attract new visitors, you invest in making their stay enjoyable, and you hope to keep them happy as long as possible with you. It doesn't hurt to look at your own work and see if you have any waiting queues. They may not be the headline attraction of your web app, but they might be the most important part of it. Some of the least glamorous functionality on some of the top websites makes the site what it is. Flickr has inline text field editing. Facebook has on-page photo tagging. del.icio.us has tag suggestion on a new bookmark. The ugliest processes can be flipped and made into selling points.