A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged. For compelling theatre, the grocery clerk should be asking himself how he might scan the canned goods with flair, how to ask for a credit card, and especially what personal touches make the most out of exchanging cash or providing a receipt. Work should be thought of as having a beginning, climax, and denouement. FedEx employees deliberately rush about to convey the impression of speed. Or think of a waitress in a fine restaurant, where every course presents a dramatic scene in the dining experience.
Good answers distinguish engaging performances from monotonous or intrusive ones.
Think back to your last encounter with a cab driver, salesman, or check-out clerk, and you will quickly come to the conclusion that dramatic design elements known for thousands of years remain regrettably absent from much work today. Technology-mediated interactions also present a bare stage for business theatre, as Brenda Laurel shows in her book Computers as Theatre. Designing human-computer experience isn't about building a better desktop. Your work is theatre. People often regard movie celebrities as egotistical, flighty, or fake and Broadway stars as pretentious or worse.