This arrangement has an important effect in the way visitors understand and navigate the park. For one thing, the themes are made clearer because they are presented as narrative variations on top of an invariant, predictable structure.

For another, this also makes the environment easier to learn, since the affordances provided by one land are present in all the others. Should the Tomorrowland visitor feel the sudden urge to use the restroom, he doesn’t need to rush back to Main Street U.S.A. since he knows all lands have at least one restroom facility.

It’s worth noting that this invariance doesn’t mean the relationships, proportions, and amounts of the elements are identical in all the lands. Adventureland has more attractions than Main Street U.S.A., for example. What’s important is that the underlying structure itself remains constant as the visitor moves from one land to the next.

This topological structure has made it possible for Disneyland to change and grow over the decades while preserving the clarity of the environment. Park designers occasionally add and remove attractions, restaurants, shops, and services to the park. Every once in a while, they also add a new land, with its own set of attractions, restaurants, shops, and services. (There’s a new one being built right now, based on the Star Wars movies.) And of course, the entire park-land construct can be replicated. (It has been, once per decade, over the past sixty years. There are now Disneyland-style parks in Florida, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.)

The latest Disneyland park opened in Shanghai in June 2016. Image: Baycrest

So how does this apply to UX? Consider how a key function of content strategy is identifying and defining content types so large-scale information environments can change organically while maintaining coherence and understandability. These content types are a topological construct of the sort I’m talking about. That said, topologies are applicable to more than just content-heavy systems; they’re an important consideration for any large information environment that must adapt to change over time. (Don’t they all?)

Language and metaphor in Disneyland

Another cunning use of structure in Disneyland is the way Disney designers use language and metaphor to influence behavior. For example, the people who work in the park are not called employees; they are cast members. These cast members don’t wear uniforms; their on-the-job clothes are referred to as costumes. And did you notice I referred to park visitors as guests? This was another semantic innovation Disney brought to the amusement park business. (The traditional term used in the industry was marks, which says a lot about how park operators thought of their customers.)

Underlying these terms is a ubiquitous metaphor: that the park and its employees are putting on a show. This metaphor informs everything about the Disneyland experience. For example, areas of the park that are forbidden to guests are said to be backstage. When something in the park is broken in plain sight of guests, it is said to be bad show.

Custodial staff member entertaining guests. Image: Loren Javier

The choice of words we use to describe elements and actors in information environments has an important effect in how we act with and within them. Think about the way your team talks about the people who use your information environments. Do you refer to them as users? Maybe you may think of them as customers? Or perhaps you have some other term, particular to your industry, such as patients. Whatever the case, the term you use will have a subtle influence in the way you design for and interact with these people. Because Disney refers to its customers as guests, cast members are more willing to accommodate their whims than if they thought of them as marks.

This showbiz metaphor, as expressed through particular language, is an important part of the semantic structure that organizes and directs the Disneyland experience. This structure establishes the divisions and connections between the elements that compose the information environment. A coherent structure can make the environment easier to learn and navigate, and makes it possible for the environment to grow and change over time.

Semantic structures have a huge influence in how people think and behave when they interact in an environment. That said, these are abstract ideas. For people to be able to relate with the environment, these structures must be made into things people can actually experience. That brings us to the final lesson: the importance of using traditional placemaking principles to create an environment the people can actually interact with.

Lesson 3: Use traditional principles to create a sense of place

With a structural framework in place, we now face the challenge of making a place that people can move around in and enjoy. This is where the learnings from urban design and architecture really pay off.

The Image of the City (1960)

The study of how people form mental models of the places they inhabit can be particularly useful. Kevin Lynch’s book The Image of the City (1960) offers insights into this. It presents five elements that define how people experience urban environments:

Districts: The sections of the town or city, which have their own character, and which people have a sense of being “inside of”.

The sections of the town or city, which have their own character, and which people have a sense of being “inside of”. Paths: The means by which people get around the environment.

The means by which people get around the environment. Landmarks: Physical structures that give people a sense of bearing.

Physical structures that give people a sense of bearing. Edges: Boundaries between two phases, lines that break continuity in the place.

Boundaries between two phases, lines that break continuity in the place. Nodes: Areas of concentration of activity that serve as focal points for people to go to or from.

Particular combinations of these elements make cities and towns different from each other and allow people to create mental models of the one they’re in. Because Disneyland is an urban-sized environment that has been designed and maintained by a single entity, these elements come together in a particularly harmonious and focused manner. Careful attention to the hierarchy of the various components of the environment, the transitions and boundaries between areas of the park, and the connections between them, create a place that is not only easy to get around in, but also coherent, learnable, and memorable.

When navigating an information environment, we also need to make sense of where we are, what we can do there, and where we can go next. Studying these elements can help us design information environments that make this possible. Let’s examine how they come together in Disneyland.

Paths, nodes, and landmarks

Let’s start by looking at how people navigate the environment. When UX designers think of navigation systems, we usually think about navigation bars and search engines. The purpose of these things is to make it possible for people to move from one area of the website or app to another, to get closer to what they’re looking for.