Comments on: Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective http://www.fergusbisset.com/blog/2009/10/30/design-for-self-service-a-motivational-psychology-perspective/ Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:47:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: psychologist perth http://www.fergusbisset.com/blog/2009/10/30/design-for-self-service-a-motivational-psychology-perspective/comment-page-1/#comment-334 psychologist perth Tue, 14 Dec 2010 03:21:00 +0000 http://www.fergusbisset.com/blog/2009/10/30/design-for-self-service-a-motivational-psychology-perspective/#comment-334 Thanks a lot for this post, very motivating indeed. Keep it coming. Thanks a lot for this post, very motivating indeed. Keep it coming.

]]> By: jasecooper http://www.fergusbisset.com/blog/2009/10/30/design-for-self-service-a-motivational-psychology-perspective/comment-page-1/#comment-153 jasecooper Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:12:29 +0000 http://www.fergusbisset.com/blog/2009/10/30/design-for-self-service-a-motivational-psychology-perspective/#comment-153 Nice post Fergus, sorry for my delayed reply, I blame it on the fact that BT are taking a life time to activate my internet!! Anyway...<br><br>It's really interesting to see how close this topic is to peoples hearts, everyone has an opinion, just search 'self serve checkout' on Twitter and you'll see the hate/love people have for these things. I'm currently speaking to lot of different types of users and the response is often varied though more often than not it's negative.<br><br>Yet you're right, people still return to these machines, one 14-year-old female user described it to me as ''fun, like a game''. While her comment made me laugh I could relate. There's something appealing about having that control, 'playing checkout', reminding me of childhood games playing grown-up.<br><br>The fact that this is a subject that stems deeper than checking out food is why this project is so fascinating for me. It's human vs. machine, a visible step into the 21st century, the future before our eyes. And when speaking to users our societies digital-divide is clear as day, while some users are glad to be rid of awkward silences and small-chat between cashier and customer others are devastated that the cashiers that have seen their children grow are being replaced by a touch screen monitor - and ironically, all of a sudden Tesco and human interaction at the till has become something of a strong-point of our community (depending on what type of user you talk to).<br><br>My user observation and interview notes are currently all over the place at the moment though I plan to bring it together within the next week. I'm interested to explore this on a bigger scale. While faults with the physical design and engineering of these things are a plenty I really want to look into what the utopian self-service checkout really means to users as a service, could it be a move that encourages users to go back to their local butcher for that human interaction? Why is self-checkout identical to human-operated-tills without the human? What the lack of human interaction means to a business? Can a robot sell me a Clubcard? The issue of trust between supermarket and user etc etc etc.<br><br>I'll make sure to keep you up to date with my findings and results... Nice post Fergus, sorry for my delayed reply, I blame it on the fact that BT are taking a life time to activate my internet!! Anyway…

It's really interesting to see how close this topic is to peoples hearts, everyone has an opinion, just search 'self serve checkout' on Twitter and you'll see the hate/love people have for these things. I'm currently speaking to lot of different types of users and the response is often varied though more often than not it's negative.

Yet you're right, people still return to these machines, one 14-year-old female user described it to me as ''fun, like a game''. While her comment made me laugh I could relate. There's something appealing about having that control, 'playing checkout', reminding me of childhood games playing grown-up.

The fact that this is a subject that stems deeper than checking out food is why this project is so fascinating for me. It's human vs. machine, a visible step into the 21st century, the future before our eyes. And when speaking to users our societies digital-divide is clear as day, while some users are glad to be rid of awkward silences and small-chat between cashier and customer others are devastated that the cashiers that have seen their children grow are being replaced by a touch screen monitor – and ironically, all of a sudden Tesco and human interaction at the till has become something of a strong-point of our community (depending on what type of user you talk to).

My user observation and interview notes are currently all over the place at the moment though I plan to bring it together within the next week. I'm interested to explore this on a bigger scale. While faults with the physical design and engineering of these things are a plenty I really want to look into what the utopian self-service checkout really means to users as a service, could it be a move that encourages users to go back to their local butcher for that human interaction? Why is self-checkout identical to human-operated-tills without the human? What the lack of human interaction means to a business? Can a robot sell me a Clubcard? The issue of trust between supermarket and user etc etc etc.

I'll make sure to keep you up to date with my findings and results…

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