How to Test a Customer Experience

At Berlin's new Brandenburg Airport, 10,000 "passenger impersonaters" have been employed to help test the airport's systems to ensure flawless operations when real passengers. The passenger impersonators roleplayed arriving flights, collecting baggage, receiving tickets, going through security. Some passengers even received cards instructing them to play specific scenarios, such as losing bags and being an unaccompanied minor.

The instructional design field calls this kind of testing "formative evaluation," and the in the retail world the closest analogy is a "soft opening." The scale of 10,000 passenger impersonaters is impressive, as are the designers of what could be called the largest training simulation in the world. Source: WSJ, May 22, 2012 A1, A14.