Service Prototyping in ‘The Founder’
In this movie about the origins of McDoncalds, founding brothers Ray and Mac explain how they perfected the fast food kitchen through a series of low-fidelity service prototyping.
Let's analyse the accuracy of the scene
To ensure simplicity and speed, no props are used, only drawings and imagination. Focus is on acting out the process and interaction between process steps.
The written list of actions-to-be-performed is not shown, but is clearly represented in the singular tasks of the individual 'actors' playing out the prototype.
An outside person observes the task flow from a good vantage point, and does the timing, ensuring learnings are captured.
Sadly, various versions explored are not captured for future comparison>. This makes further future analysis and presentation difficult. In reality this exercise was done as depicted in the movive... and it rained right after. So the brothers had to re-draw the layout from memory, and redo parts of the exercise. Always capture your prototype versions.
Although this is a backstage process, it does share 2 touchpoints with the customer: ordering and delivery. However, no-one is playing a 'customer' role. Adding customers could bring further insights to light. Nonetheless, it shows that focus was applied to a specific part of the service: the backstage process.
Other aspects of service design shown in the clip:
This scene is also a great example of backstage process improvement.
The idea of iterations is shown very well too.
The brothers even named this approach: the Speedee Service System. This illustrates internal branding. Too bad they never patented it... Go watch the movie!
Do you have additional ideas or thoughts? Let us know!