Become excellent. Be unreasonable. | Will Guidara for Big Think+
What Hospitality Teaches Us About Good Design
In his talk, restaurateur Will Guidara highlights an essential truth that extends beyond the restaurant industry. The key is that how we make people feel matters more than the product or service itself. (Everyone offers a product or service no matter what industry.) Guidara’s philosophy of “unreasonable hospitality” means going above and beyond to make others feel uniquely seen and valued. It isn’t just a recipe for great customer service but a general blueprint for designing exceptional user experiences.
As creators, we’re in the business of solving problems and delighting the people we design for, while ensuring form and function. However, what truly sets great design apart is its ability to connect with users on an emotional level.
Be Present to the Human We Are Serving
Hospitality begins with being fully present with the human you are interacting with. This means setting aside distractions to engage and understand deeply of the needs, pain points, fears, hopes and aspirations or those we serve. This is empathy-driven design.
Every touchpoint of an Apple’s product is tailored to make one feel valued or important. When you open any iPhone package (even for the charger), the experience is deliberate; there is a focus on tactile satisfaction that many other companies do not care to value. Their attention to detail shows they care about a persons’ first interaction, that the customer matters.
To design with presence, we must truly know who we are serving, prioritize their experiences, reactions, etc. It helps to remove distractions that could hinder our focus on what truly matters to them.
Design for Delight and Be Flexible Doing It
One of Guidara’s key points is that rigid self-imposed standards can limit the ability to bring joy to others. The same applies to design. Strict adherence to a brand’s aesthetic or technical specifications [for the sake of maintaining SOPs] should not come at the expense of user delight.
In design, flexibility means iterating quickly based on human feedback and embracing unconventional ideas if they serve our customers better. Why not? I think an important question to ask is “How can we make this design [experience] joyful?”
Guidara shares a story about replacing a champagne cart with Budweiser cart for a guest at Eleven Madison Park. That simple act of thoughtful substitution made the guest feel seen, relaxed, and welcome. In design, these “Budweiser cart” moments are often small details that show users you’re paying attention. But this does require a removal of control over some SOPs, strongly-held beliefs or the status quo.
One Size Fits One
This was my favorite idea from Guidara. It is the idea that hospitality thrives when it’s personal. A custom approach that treats people as individuals and leaves a lasting impression on them. It is of course very hard to design for the individual versus for the masses. The designing, the tooling, time, etc… a project engineering is probably freaking out reading this. Of course this is all true and it is not always practical. But here’s a thought – if we enter into a design project with the mindset of “we are designing to satisfy the most people possible to reduce costs, at all costs, then what does that do to our design? Embarking on a project where the requirement is to make it good enough will yield mediocre at best, unusable at worst.
I argue that great design starts with creating an experience that feels uniquely tailored to the individual; that solves their problem in a unique way. Then converge. Converging into a solution that is broader at the very least started with a focus on the human you are serving, instead of profits and often irrelevant specifications. The other way around turns into a jack-of-all-trades, master of none situation. Imagine a product that provides moments of surprise and delight. I often see features on my [older] iPhone that provide small delights.
Relationships Are Not Transactions
Guidara closes his talk with an awesome quote – “The only competitive advantage that really exists comes through investing consistently and generously into relationships.”
Products will evolve and competitors may catch up, however the emotional connection you build with the humans you are serving can foster loyalty that is hard to shake. It is a strong marketing concept that many engineers and designers forget.
Designing with hospitality in mind is 1.) solving problems that matter, and 2.) designing the experience that people remember and come back to