ABSTRACT
Seth Godin often writes about the need for creativity and function within traditional operations. For example, in one of his blog posts he talks about the necessity of significant safety signage that he noted in a recent trip to a well-known national amusement park. He notes that the signs were all presented differently using various colors, sizes, shapes, and fonts. These variations ultimately challenged the effectiveness of the signs because they were hard to read and inconsistent from ride to ride and place to place. The lack of design is inefficient, ineffective, and ultimately unnecessary. Specifically, Godin states that “The cost of making each sign attractive is precisely zero . . . same amount of ink, same amount of wood . . . yet if more people read the signs, injuries would decrease, lines would move faster and . . . [the park] would make more money.”2 It is this very divide that defines much of the operations within professional emergency management. Function should lead design, but that isn’t always the case (please see Figure 9.1).
