Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
February 2012
January 2012
- Offensive Advertising, Increased Sales?
- I Sold Out For Millions, Then Worked At McDonald's
- Steve Jobs on Failure
- The Famous Western Failure
- Thank Goodness for Drug Addicts
December 2011
- It's a Wonderful Failure
- Stadium Destroyed, Reborn
- Failure to Trust the Astronauts
- Failure and the Baggy Pants Tradition
- Failure at The Happiest Place on Earth
- Saving What Was Lost
- FailureBank: A Social Learning Utility
November 2011
- A Thanksgiving Failure
- Harriet Tubman's Clever Lie
- The Failures of Lemieux
- Failed to Return a Text
- Admitting Failure
- A Leaders Job: Support Failure
October 2011
- [VIDEO] Mistakes with Tasty Dum Dums
- Failure and the Chocolate Chip Cookie
- Failure Goes Digital
- Using AIDS to Fight Cancer
- Victory Despite Obstacles
September 2011
Self Checkout: Not Faster
In the last few years, countless retail stores have installed self-checkout machines. It turns out that scanning and bagging your purchases actually takes more time. So why do we do it?
To understand this particular cognitive error, we should look at a problem that has fascinated psychologists for over a hundred years: time perception. Back in the late 19th century, scientists first discovered that we are consistently bad at estimating duration. In individual examples we tend to be way off in predictable ways.
For example, consider the experience of traveling. The return trip virtually always seems shorter than the initial journey, even when we cover the same ground in the same time. Our guesses, too, are usually skewed. We tend to overestimate the amount of time required to travel a short distance, but underestimate the time needed for a longer journey. Our sense of time is surprisingly and consistently inaccurate.
This is probably something you’ve experienced. Sitting in a motionless passenger jet for five minutes seems like agony, yet an hour at cruising speed goes by in the blink of an eye. Watch a fantastic movie in a dark theater and you’ll probably be shocked by how much time has passed. A terrible film, however, seems far longer than its actual running time. Why is this, and what does it have to do with self-checkout machines?
Current scientific thinking is that time perception has some link to our sense of comfort and control. The trip home is familiar, so it seems to go faster. A great movie is enjoyable, so the minutes race by. Waiting on the tarmac could be interminable, but zooming at altitude is just steady progress. We feel better and thus time flies.
A self-checkout machine actually takes longer to use than having trained staff process your merchandise. But it feels faster to do it yourself. Hence, stores are putting up kiosks that cost less to operate even though they actually delay customers. Human failure to judge time is the secret to their success.
Want to hear more stories? Buy the book Failure: The Secret to Success today!
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Ryan Hainlen