Simplicity of Interface Design

Verizon-Store4
Originally uploaded by mauser_fan

Design is an interesting thing because it is so subjective. Everyone has an opinion on design, what they like, what they prefer, even if they don't understand what drives their opinions. Sometimes kiosk interface design can become very complex, hard to navigate, and frankly too much to look at. Often simple is better. Better because it is easy for the viewer to understand the purpose, and easier for their eyes to focus on important content.

Design can often set the mood, visually simple design can set a calming mood and affect the user's experience. Busy designs or designs with heavy animation can often create a sense of high energy and can be good for kiosks with a multimedia or entertainment purpose. But either way, design should be strategic with the goals and the user in mind. If budget allows, do focus groups or A/B testing to see which designs provide the desired results or actions by the guests.

Just be careful of the dreaded "design by committee" which is when multiple people within a corporate setting feel they have to interject their own design ideas, and in the end you get a Frankenstein design, which is often poor. Trust talented design professionals who went to school for design and know how to effectively engage. Just be sure to give them all of the strategic goals up front so they can consider them when conceiving the designs. While I'm not a good designer myself, I did attend art college and know how the creative process works (I ended up in photography). I have also managed interactive teams with design agencies for nearly 10 years for major brands, and know both the account executive side of things as well as the designer or producer side of things. Give a good designer the right information, and you'll be happy with the results.

As you know, with this Blog I often reference kiosks I see out in the real world, and the image shown here is from a local Verizon Wireless store near my home. I took the images with a camera phone so please excuse the quality. This check-in kiosk is simple in design, which makes it easy to understand and the guest can quickly perform the task at hand. Branding is consistent with VZW's other corporate material and onscreen media. Our company has done mobile marketing kiosks for Verizon Wireless and while the design is a bit more creative on ours, you would still tie the two together in regards to branding.

The purpose of this kiosk was to quickly get the patrons to the store into a queue for service. The store is always busy, and they find it to be most effective to get them into the system and then allow them to wander the store until their name is called or posted on digital signage in the store. This prevents them from standing in a physical line, when they could be exploring new phones, accessories and making impulse purchases. It was pretty effective and made the process clear.

More images of the interface are available on my Flickr account here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21792517@N02/2176776060/ along with other retail examples. The photos show the hardware, as well as the onscreen interface to allow guest to self serve and get checked in.

Check-in kiosks are a common form of self service. We have developed check in kiosks for an American Express sponsored event where guests registered online before the event, and checked in at the kiosks once at the event. They confirmed their information and registered for the door prize at the kiosks. They also filled out a short survey that enabled us to gather yet more demographics and learn more about them. Amex and other sponsors had onscreen branding and expo information. The beauty of this type of setup is that it allows you to measure attendance, build your profiles of your guests for remarketing purposes later, provide automated sweepstakes winners on site, and more. All done electronically, not by hand and by paper, thus speeding up the time for turn around of data for data mining, removing double keying and lowering error rates.

Check in kiosks can take many shapes, event check-in, hotel check-in, or retail check-in such as this example above. How might your company use check-in kiosks? Comment below and share your experiences.

Virtual Bartender kiosk in retail store

IMG00234
Originally uploaded by mauser_fan

I was recently told to go check out a kiosk at the local "Party Source" retail store. So my salesperson and I head over at lunch and find the "Virtual Bartender" kiosk. It's a very well done point of purchase retail kiosk that is setup on an end cap. It has a good use of video to describe how to make drinks with a bit of whimsical humor. It also has "recipes" on how to make the drinks and you can print them to a receipt printer below the screen. Good signage above, and around the screen are well made, and the kiosk uses a wide screen touch panel that is becoming more common.

This POP kiosk is great because it has the product referenced on the kiosks sitting right in front of you. You don't have to find it in the store. This kiosk is by Bar.com, nice job guys! I'm sure that there was a lot of work put into this, and the video production budget must have been pretty big!

See more of these images on my Flickr account. I have many interface shots.

Tis the season to plan your next kiosk project

Well, it has been a busy December. Our firm has been cranking out proposals for kiosks and digital signage like mad men! This is the time of year when many corporations need to either spend money by the end of the year, or they are taking the slow time at the holidays to start planning initiatives for 2008. Often, the planning and fact finding is done at this time of year, to prepare for budgeting season that is often in the March time frame. Budgeting is proposed internally, and then approved by the end of the corporate calendar year which is often June. That money is then part of the following corporate calendar year's budget. Development on these projects may not start in earnest until the summer or fall of next year.

This is an annual exercise for firms like Electronic Art and my competitors. We are all cranking out proposals, responding to RFP's, and letting everything else get pushed back while we attempt to land this new business. It can be frustrating, but this is when many projects are born, and this groundwork can make it possible to land that project in the late spring. There is often a long sales cycle in regards to these projects. It can be frustrating for the "new business development" staff, but accepted.

If you are looking for firms to bid on a kiosk or digital signage project, take a look at your needs. Think about what "pain" you are trying to solve, and do a good job of outlining what you want from the vendor. If what you need is an off the shelf solution, start comparing apples to apples. If your needs are custom or you want it custom built so you "own it" and don't have to pay licensing... outline the project well, and find vendors who will be consultative in their approach. Often a good vendor can suggest good features for your project that you may have overlooked, and raise concerns about feasibility and cost (do you REALLY have a Google budget to build this??) and tell you how they can save you money, or implement tools to speed up time to deliver.

For example, we once had a client with a small budget that needed a content management tool to manage the kiosk. We could have built him one if he had budget, but he needed to spend much of his budget on hardware, design, and video production. So we suggested the use of a free third party tool to allow him to manage textual content, in this case it was a calendar of events. This allowed him to spend his money where he really needed it. Now we also had to explain the dangers, which include that vendor going out of business, etc. But the risk was low since the third party vendor was Google. We integrated the Google tool within a day and had that portion of the project out of the way.

At the same time, realize that your kiosk vendor has to be careful not to give you a full project description for free that you can shop around to his competitors. So often a consultative approach may lead to a consultation fee to cover the cost of R&D, Project specifications creation, flow charts, wireframes, etc. If you don't have this work already done, then expect to pay for it. In the end, you'll have all you need to get the funding, or have a clearly defined project, so you and your vendor know what is being built.

Some prospects come to us with clear specifications for their project, so we can give clear pricing. Others are vaguely written, or don't have enough information to accurately price but still want a price by next week. So those proposals are often written with price ranges such as "between $50K - $75K depending on complexity". If the client cannot define how complex it will be, what features it will have, and what level of integration is needed... how can I know what it will cost me to build it? As a solution provider, I have to be fair to the client and my company.

A kiosk solution provider should listen to your needs, and be consultative in their approach. Sometimes it is not about selling you the biggest project they can, but rather selling you the right project for your budget or what is right for the project. But make sure you are being fair to them and giving them what they need to help you. Like Jerry Maguire said to Rod Tidwell in the movie "Jerry Maguire" - - "Help me... help you".