Behavioral AVL: Accidental Strategy

AV is a gear business, right? Dig into the specs. What’s the resolution? What’s the sample rate? How many lumens? Which protocols talk to one another? Specs matter. Compute matters. Reliability matters. Warranties matter.

We are an industry infatuated with the latest gear, but the mechanisms of the human mind should also earn our fascination. A Vegas or Orlando trade show floor won’t have booths sharing the latest on client and user behavior any time soon. However, we do have a gallery of experiences of interactions and decisions that aren’t always consistent or intuitive. Studying these behaviors can help us unlock our approach to applying technological progress to human need.

This brings us to a case study. A church I worked with recently had an extremely imbalanced approach to their AVL disciplines, but in doing so they may have stumbled onto a shrewd budgetary approach to AVL renovation.

As designers we generally try to keep disciplines balanced. If a venue is getting an A-tier audio system, they’re also getting an A-tier lighting system and A-tier video system. A budget venue might show the same balance, but at lower tiers. Sure, some venues might emphasize one discipline over another, but they are still fairly close to being at the same level.

This client was anything but balanced. Poll AV professionals on top speaker manufacturers and three global brands will likely rise to the top. This church insisted on one of those three. Among audio console manufacturers, there is a similarly short list of manufacturers that are among the top tier. This church insisted on one of these.

Conduct a similar poll among lighting professionals about their rankings of top-level console manufacturers and you end up with a similarly short list. The manufacturer the church insisted on was not one of these, but a second-tier manufacturer. A solid platform, no doubt, but the client insisted on the entry-level console in their lineup. The lighting fixtures were from a top manufacturer, but also their entry-level line.

So, what did the church end up with? A speaker and audio mixer from world-class manufacturers and a lighting system that, while reliable, was a minimum viable product. It was an imbalanced system.

On one level, this isn’t unexpected. Protestant churches like this one have a historical, theological emphasis on the spoken word as an institution with a message. Further, music holds a strong position within churches. Sacred space making, which emphasizes more visual concerns such as architecture and lighting, has taken a back seat. But even in that context, the imbalance was more extreme than I had ever encountered.

What is the underlying mindset resulting in such an imbalance? The above context probably provides a lot of the motivation. This was furthered by the chief technical staff person having come from an audio background. The facility renovation provided an opportunity to get a dream system for what was important to him. He was satisfied if the other systems were merely functional.

While it’s easy to fault that imbalanced approach, they caught their footing on a redeeming quality. Their investment purchased an A-grade audio system but a C-grade lighting system; if they took a more balanced approach they would have had B-grade systems for both. Another way of putting it is that they have a 20-year audio system and 7-year lighting system instead of having two 10-year systems. If you can survive a sub-par lighting system for seven years until you can afford another capital allocation, you still have more than a decade of life on the audio system. That sounds like a pretty shrewd decision. Compare that to ten years down the road having to replace both.

I suspect that the staggered replacement approach was not part of their calculations. Nevertheless, they stumbled into what can be an advantageous situation for their budgeting. The severe imbalance between system qualities is one behavior, but multiple thought processes could produce that result.

A biased afterthought became a well-reasoned forethought. Understanding psychological perspectives can prove as valuable as knowing technological spec sheets. Sometimes we lead clients to wise decisions via accidental strategy.