Design the exit: What Disney, the NBA, and your front desk have in common

In 1993, psychologist Daniel Kahneman made a breakthrough discovery that completely changed how researchers think about memory and experience recall: when people look back on an experience, they tend to remember only the peak and the ending. How long the experience lasted, and how most of it felt, mattered far less than what one would expect.¹

This has since fundamentally reshaped how the entertainment, hospitality, and sports industries design experiences. As a creative director who’s applied these concepts in a number of settings, I strongly believe Kahneman’s research has something valuable to offer pediatric dentistry as well. 

The peak-end rule 

Kahneman, who would later receive the Nobel Prize in economics, called this the peak-end rule. His research has held up remarkably well outside the lab, especially in health care. In one of the more interesting follow-ups, Redelmeier, Katz, and Kahneman studied colonoscopy patients and compared two groups: one that underwent a standard procedure, and another whose procedure was extended slightly with a less painful final phase.

The patients who experienced the gentler ending rated the entire procedure more favorably than those in the standard group, and were significantly more likely to return for subsequent care.² Same procedure, same clinical quality, but a different ending produced a wildly different outcome. 

For anyone working in pediatric or family dentistry, this research is particularly relevant. Young patients are forming their foundational impressions of dental care, and parents are actively deciding whether to return, refer, or look elsewhere. Consider the possibility that an excellent clinical visit followed by a routine, unremarkable ending is remembered less positively than a less remarkable visit that concluded with something the child genuinely valued. It sounds like a stretch. The evidence suggests it isn’t. 

Whether a child wants to come back, how a parent feels about the practice overall, whether that family recommends you to someone else — all of these are shaped, more than most of us would assume, by what happens in the final few minutes. 

Where the opportunity lies 

Think about what the final minute of a pediatric visit often looks like: the procedure wraps up, the child receives a sticker or picks a small toy, the parent handles checkout, and the family heads out. 

That sequence is perfectly standard. There’s nothing wrong with it. But through the lens of peak-end research, it also represents an underutilized moment. The clinical work may have been outstanding and the hygienist may have built real rapport with the child—yet the last impression the family takes with them is transactional. 

Other industries arrived at this realization some time ago. Restaurants close with small, deliberate gestures—a complimentary espresso, a handwritten note tucked into the check. Theme parks route guests through retail at ride exits so they leave holding something physical. Children’s museums hand out stamps and passports on the way out. These aren’t afterthoughts. They reflect a clear-eyed understanding that the final moment of an experience tends to anchor the memory of everything before it. 

I have spent the better part of my career working within this principle, first in entertainment and creative strategy, then in professional sports with the Dallas Mavericks and the NBA. The pattern held across very different contexts. Organizations that invested in how an experience ended—with the same care they brought to how it began—consistently built deeper, more lasting loyalty. 

What a designed ending looks like 

None of this requires major investment or a rethinking of clinical priorities. What it requires is intentionality: treating the postvisit moment as something worth designing, rather than leaving it to default. 

Recognize the visit as an achievement. Children’s lives are structured around milestones: a first day of school, a first bicycle ride, a first lost tooth. A dental visit that ends without acknowledgment gets filed as routine and fades quickly. But when it ends with even a small moment of recognition—a personalized certificate, a genuine and specific compliment from the hygienist—the experience registers differently. Research on positive reinforcement in pediatric settings supports this consistently: children retainexperiences where they felt individually seen.³ 

Weigh the farewell as heavily as the welcome. Most practices put considerable care into the arrival through a warm check-in, a welcoming waiting area, or a thoughtful introduction to the clinical team. All of it matters, but the goodbye deserves at least as much attention. There is a meaningful difference between “great job, see you next time” and “you were incredibly brave during your cleaning today.” Small shift. Outsized impact.

Give the family something to take with them. In experience design, this is sometimes called the souvenir principle: a physical or digital artifact that extends the emotional life of an experience beyond the moment itself. A printed certificate, a digital badge sent to a parent’s phone, a short personalized video, a photo opportunity near the entrance. These serve two purposes at once: the child gets something to revisit and retell and the parent gets something worth sharing.

Why this connects to practice growth 

Children who leave a visit with something to talk about will talk about it. A child who tells people “the dentist gave me a bravery award” is generating the kind of organic word-of-mouth that advertising simply cannot replicate. 

Parents are perhaps even more significant here. They are already documenting their children’s milestones on social media, so the question is whether your practice name appears anywhere in it. Right now, in most cases, there is nothing in the postvisit moment that gives a parent a natural reason to tag, mention, or recommend a specific practice. 

Peer recommendations remain one of the strongest drivers of health-care decisions, particularly for family services.⁴ A single tagged post from a satisfied parent reaches exactly the audience most practices want: local families with young children, actively evaluating providers. 

And the financial case is straightforward. The lifetime value of one pediatric family can easily exceed $10,000.⁵ If a thoughtfully designed postvisit moment retains even one additional family per month or generates a single organic referral, the return on that investment is hard to argue with. 

A final thought 

I want to be clear that I write this as someone from outside the dental profession, with genuine respect for the clinical skill and emotional intelligence that pediatric dentistry requires. 

My point is a focused one. The final 60 seconds of a visit deserve the same thoughtfulness that practices already bring to the clinical encounter itself. Not because the ending matters more than the care; it obviously doesn’t. But because decades of well-replicated research tell us that the ending exerts an outsized influence on how that care is remembered, discussed, and valued. 

Dental care is what brings families to your practice. But the experience is what drives word of mouth and keeps them coming back. Most of that experience is decided during the final minute.

References 

1. Kahneman D, Fredrickson BL, Schreiber CA, Redelmeier DA. When more pain is preferred to less: adding a better end. Psychol Sci. 1993;4(6):401-405.

2. Redelmeier DA, Katz J, Kahneman D. Memories of colonoscopy: a randomized trial. Pain. 2003;104(1-2):187-194. doi:10.1016/s0304-3959(03)00003-4

3. Behavior guidance for the pediatric dental patient. American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry. Last updated 2024.  https://www.aapd.org/globalassets/media/policies_guidelines/bp_behavguide.pdf  

4. Neilsen trust in advertising. Nielsen. 2021.  https://www.nielsen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/2021-Nielsen-Trust-In-Advertising-Sell-Sheet.pdf 

5. Levin RP. The lifetime value of a dental patient. Dental Economics. 2019.