The absence of numbered aisles at Whole Foods is a deliberate customer experience strategy, not an oversight. It forces shoppers to ask employees for help, who are then trained to personally walk them to the item. This design choice engineers personal conversations and embeds a high-touch service model directly into the store's physical layout.

In a study, subtle gray tape lines on a gray carpet—consciously unnoticed by shoppers—steered 18% of them into a target aisle, up from just 4% before. This shows that retailers can use almost invisible environmental cues to powerfully manipulate shopper behavior and store pathing without their awareness.

From Alfred Speer's 10 mph vision in 1871 to modern failures in Paris, the moving walkway has failed as mass transit because of the fundamental physics problem of safely onboarding people onto a platform already moving at high speed, leading to trips and falls.

To overcome user apprehension about its new "Astroway" at LAX, American Airlines hired Lucille Ball for a targeted marketing campaign. The goal was to demonstrate its safety and ease of use, specifically for women who might be hesitant to ride while wearing high heels.

After failing as a city-wide transit solution, the moving walkway found its perfect product-market fit in airports, solving the specific pain point of long treks through ever-expanding terminals created by the jet age.

The drive for hyper-efficiency, seen in targeted ads or ghost kitchens, eliminates the valuable "slosh" that funds culture and journalism. This friction and inefficiency are essential for creating vibrant cities and healthy economic ecosystems, as they provide the space for creativity and community to flourish.

The moving walkway’s popular debut at World's Fairs typecast it as an amusement ride, creating a "magnificently impractical" reputation that prevented government officials from taking it seriously for major urban infrastructure projects like the Brooklyn Bridge.

Professional line-waiting services, charging significant hourly rates for tasks like waiting for sample sales, demonstrate a growing market for time itself. This trend reveals that affluent consumers are increasingly willing to pay a high premium to "buy back" their time, creating a new gig economy niche based on patience and availability.

While often no faster than walking, iconic moving walkways like Chicago O'Hare's succeed by transforming a tedious journey into a "transportive and calming" experience. This demonstrates the high value of experiential design in otherwise utilitarian public infrastructure.