McDonald’s

Experience Designer

How to topple the Golden Arches with one brilliant idea. (Or, sometimes it is better to go with the second-best idea.)

SITUATION

While working as an eVisionary at IBM Global Services, Mike Wittenstein engaged in an Experience Design project with McDonalds.  In 1999, well before the iPhone and today’s advanced internet technologies, McDonald’s needed help designing a wireless drive-thru experience.  McDonalds wanted to understand how to take orders while people were still driving in their cars, what the ordering experience would be like, and what the impact would be on the kitchen.  They also wanted to determine the complexity of such an offering, it’s impact on resources (financial and personnel), and how it could positively affect the overall customer experience.

OPPORTUNITY

Illustrate the dynamics of a wireless drive-thru experience from the customer’s point-of-view so that McDonald’s could aggressively prototype. and adjust, a design for a better market launch, and easier adoption in the field.

SOLUTION

After an exhaustive initial review of existing research, a series of mystery shops, and numerous internal discussions, we focused first on the actual technology to make sure it could actually work.  A technology solution was proposed that would work within the constraints of McDonald’s operations.

To help McDonald’s internal leadership team win support for the project, we prepared a detailed, high-level Experience Design presentation – in cartoon form  – of each stage of the process, broke down the work required at each stage, and estimated the complexity, risk and reward.  This project, it turned out, was one of 150 other innovations projects going on at the same time; which created a massive roadblock to getting both an ear and an approval.

So Mike also developed a new system for managing innovation incubation at McDonalds.  Called the Innovation Accelerator, it helped McDonalds clear its backlog of projects and accelerate ideas into test market scenarios.

RESULTS

Results from the Experience Design project both raised eyebrows and dropped jaws.  The raised eyebrows were for an elegant and sophisticated structure that nicely integrated all the design components and vendors into one neat package.  Precisely what they had been looking for.

The jaws hit the floor, however, when McDonald’s management was faced with the numbers.  Everyone knew the project would be expensive.  But no one anticipated that a wireless drive-thru experience could be so successful that it could actually implode the capabilities of the kitchen during peak times.  It’s every QSR operator’s profitability dream to squeeze one more car through the drive-thru at lunch hour.  But this wireless ordering system had the potential to more than quadruple lunch production, a potential nightmare that would require a new kitchen build and/or new real estate to be purchased.  Not to mention the dramatic change it would make to the entire McDonalds experience.

While deemed incredibly successful as a design idea, it simply wasn’t feasible at that time to retrofit the units to accommodate wireless drive-thru ordering.  However, a number of embedded ideas that were part of the technology recommendation have become part of McDonalds operation, most notably the call-center approach to drive-thru.

That innovation was actually taken on by a team of McDonalds folks who spun off from the Golden Arches and started their own company.  Rather than wearing a headset in the store, orders from the drive-thru board go to a call-center, where callers are greeted in their native language.  Their order is then transmitted to the store’s computer, which speeds delivery and reduces errors.