6. ” If You Have a Body You Are An Athlete” n

41. by Colin Trask , contributor * • 03 Jan 2006 Although the number is dwindling, there are those who recall the days of milkmen, gas station attendants and bank tellers. Now, we take care of most of those jobs ourselves, and seem happy to do it. There are few areas of our economy that haven’t been touched by the growing self-service industry. And, it’s not something that’s being forced on the customer by budget cuts and lower overhead. More and more people just prefer to do it themselves. What has transformed the shopper’s mindset from a desire to be waited on to a desire to serve himself? Peter Honebein has made it his business to find out. As a learning psychologist and instructional designer, he has accumulated 10 years experience designing software products and training programs for customers and employees. Along with Roy Cammarano, he has written "Creating Do-It-Yourself Customers: How Great Customer Experiences Build Great Companies." Honebein sees the self-service industry drawing on five types of do-it-yourself customers. The first is the transactional customer who is willing to carry out the transaction role of doing business. The next is the traditional customer ; this is the classic DIY kind of guy: he fixes it, builds it and renovates it himself. Third is the conventional customer . This customer is the co-creator of product value, where all products are viewed as services and — through use of the product — the customer becomes a co-creator of its applications. Fourth is the intentional customer who wants to be in on the design phase. This customer shops Build-A-Bear stores, designs his own basketball shoes at NikeID.com or builds her own Barbie online. Lastly, there’s the radical customer . This type discovers new ways to use a product; ways that weren’t even intended when it was designed. iPOD is one example; it was intended for music but those radical customers wanted more, so now we have pod casting. According to Honebein, the trick for businesses is determining what type — or combination of types its customers are and to design a system that satisfies them. Look at your business through the eyes of your customer type and address operations to that type. Betting on self-service Looking at business through the customer’s eyes was the challenge facing Tim Yeltin, director of new development for Charlson Broadcast Technologies (CBT), a Northern Kentucky that has been bringing IT innovations to the horse racing industry since 1985. The psychology of self-service

59. Man Vs Machine – What are the implications of a cyborg society? The psychology of speed dating‚ the origin of magical beliefs and London’s first media-arts festival launches