Passenger Focus

Research here in the UK suggests that too many passengers are left standing in ticket queues while ticket machines remain unused. Passenger Focus found that travellers familiar with ticket machines are not always confident when making complex or less-familiar journeys and need help from staff. Often this is because ticket restrictions are not displayed clearly on ticket machines. Passengers may avoid the machines or give up, queue at the ticket office and risk missing their train. Are we in the kiosk industry letting down our customers? Surely, we can do better than this!

Even I - someone who has worked with public access systems for over ten years - have been intimidated by ticket machines - a bewildering array of buttons and choices to make. Bad enough at the best of times but, when you’re in a hurry to catch a train, very stressful.

It should be possible by now to have intelligent software delivered through kiosks that have been designed to be easy to use when time is of the essence. The software should be able to select the best fair options for the destination and time of day and the dialogue with the user should be ultra-simple. It should know which trains are due to leave shortly and offer these first as fast-track options. The first screen could even be displayed as a touch-sensitive destination board - with platform and departure time information displayed. When the user selects a train, the destination and pricing options could be listed next. That’s just two touches to get to the point where you need to pay. How difficult is that?

Now, I know that ticket pricing is far more complex than that, but I do feel that some in this industry have forgotten about the end-users’ needs in difficult circumstances.

21 July 2010

More than the Box

Why? Recent research has shown that the leading kiosk development issues for providers are: pricing, software, connectivity and time-to-market. These issues are aligned with and reflect the underlying requirements of our customers, and probably most of you who are reading this now. We believe the reliability and performance of hardware has for many years exceeded that of the software configuration, systems and user interfaces that depend on this hardware. Unfortunately the exponential growth in hardware performance has not translated into similar software performance levels. We also believe the reliability and availability of kiosk hardware has for many years exceeded that of the networking infrastructure connecting the hardware to wider network. So, hardware performance can ultimately depend on the software and the network, and there is a symbiotic link between all three.

In an increasingly networked world, with many sources of data, the responsiveness and reliability of kiosk user interfaces has to exceed that of all competing hand-held touch screen devices. We believe those without access to or the ability to access these small devices are the most in need of a user interface and experience that is fast, interesting, relevant and easy. And for those who are packing the latest iPhone then we believe we should be building more bridges between the device and kiosk, and all available channels, setting information free.

In summary we offer more than the box simply because after 20 years we’re pretty good at making the box. However there is now a pressing need to tackle the familiar kiosk project issues, and misconceptions, for our customers and kiosk users:
- a poor return on the investment due to capital and ongoing costs not matched to the business case;
- software not working as it should leading to frustrated users and staff, and
- other elements not working as they should such as the network or 3rd party data feeds.

How?

At Neo we continually strive to be the leading Kiosk Systems Integrator by creating customer focussed products and services. As a single specialist integration provider, coupled with a global in-house manufacturing facility, we are well placed to deliver kiosk projects and effective larger roll-outs in a cost effective way and fast time-to-market.

Build a platform, use the best tools and become more responsive

By designing simple software that does the bare minimum to enable interoperability we create more innovative services and software solutions for our hardware, or in fact any hardware provider. These products have been designed as a platform and kiosk ’app infrastructure’ on to which more end-user facing products can be built. We have also built network applications that move data to and from kiosks in an asynchronous way and also services that move data between files and SQL database systems. These platform products are designed to be agnostic to the hardware and peripherals, data format, GUI technology and communications protocol. The platform also includes re-usable GUI components that have been optimised for many collaborating users and multi-touch gesture based applications.

The platform together with a focus on responsiveness and agile teams, engineering best practice and user-centred design translate into time savings, effective delivery, high-quality results and a greater ability to change. This is especially important when conducting kiosk trial projects or prototyping new concepts.

We discovered there were no open, modern and extensible libraries or development environments tailored for the development of kiosk software and user interfaces. Those that do exist tend to be closed or limited to programming models or proprietary scripting that are not powerful enough to create cutting edge user interfaces or to link to standard 3rd party libraries or services. These environments were usually designed for a specific application type, such as Internet cafe browsers or digital signage, and then extended to try and meet the needs of more general application development.

We believe GUIs should be carefully hand crafted and built using tools that strike the right balance between expressiveness, ease of use to the developer and interoperability with other tools. It is the other tools for compiling, testing, deploying and configuring that we automate so that we can spend more of our time on new feature requests, ensuring applications are properly debugged prior to deployment and supporting customers.

This approach allows us to add value through design, engineering and the knowledge of how to select, integrate and support the best possible hardware, software and distributed components.

What?

Okay, now you have a general idea of why we are interested in more than the box and how we changed the company to support this new direction it’s time to provide some specific facts and examples to backup these beliefs and to also introduce some of the applications, utilities and services we are now providing, and finally some of the active areas of research and development for the kiosks of the future.

In 2008, Neo delivered application software, content acquisition software, an operating platform, hardware and remote managed services to its first integration customer in the UK.

In 2009, Neo followed up with e-wrap delivering this innovative solution to Australian retailers, again integrating all the elements in house and accepting responsibility for the complete solution and operation support.

In 2010, we have been working on packages, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and utilities that are all about helping our goal to provide the best kiosk systems integration experience.

The .Net API we have developed is called the Neo Kiosk Framework and this has a corresponding JavaScript API called WebLink. These APIs provide Neo’s kiosk operating platform that sits just above the OS and just below end-user applications. The APIs provide higher level functions to support kiosk hardware peripherals, modern touch based user interface controls, encryption, inter-kiosk and server communications, file transfer, content acquisition, device management, sales order processing and payment services.

I hope that this has given you an insight into our thought processes and current areas of activity. Please contact us for more information on how to license this software and our kiosk management services.

10 June 2010

Kiosk Success Factor #2

In this series of blogs, I will describe the critical success factors that make or break a kiosk system - the things that determine whether the kiosks make money, or whether they are just a waste of space. The second factor I’d like to talk about is attraction. Kiosks must attract users to them. Ideally, they will be immediately recognisable for the useful function that they perform. If they have this quality, then they have achieved iconic status. If they have yet to reach that ideal, then they must advertise their presence and function, and they must be placed where users can find them easily.

Attraction: the quality of arousing interest

In my last blog, I said that a kiosk must deliver benefits to the user that are immediately obvious. Let’s assume our kiosk system has that quality. It might still go unused if potential users don't see it, or if they see it but don’t perceive what it has to offer them. You probably have only a few seconds to capture the user’s interest before they walk on by. What can you do to grab their attention?

Locate it where your customers go and where the footfall is greatest. This is often towards the front or centre of a store, but for the particular people you want to attract, it might be next to something else they tend to buy or do. However, there are two pitfalls here. First, don’t make the mistake of obstructing passers-by. Secondly, don’t create a situation where your users feel that they are in other people’s way or that they have privacy - more on this in a later blog.

Brand the kiosk using colour and decals. If you’re deploying hundreds of units, then it may be worth having a kiosk designed to meet your specific needs that looks like no other. That way, when your system takes off, your units will have iconic status. If you’re not ready for a custom-designed unit, then it’ amazing what can be done with colours, decals and other branding add-ons.

Advertise the presence of the kiosk with signs and use the screen to display an 'attractor sequence'. This is just a series of messages, images and video that shout out: "come and use me". Be careful with sound though. You must avoid interfering with other business or annoying passers-by. You can go one better by mounting a second screen above the kiosk to run the attractor sequence. This has the advantage of not interfering with the operation of the kiosk (it can run even when someone is using the machine) and it is also up above the heads of the crowd - if you are lucky enough to have one.

Cluster several kiosks together so that they create a bigger impact. This also leads to a kind of critical mass that actually draws in more users. Nowhere has this effect been better demonstrated than by Fujifilm’s digital photo kiosks at Harvey Norman stores in Australia. If you can get a buzz going, with lots of users around a cluster of kiosks, then the crowd will attract even more people. You then have the really nice problem of ensuring that no-one has to wait long to use a kiosk.



Iconic Status is achieved when the kiosd becomes well-known for what it does. RedBox is a great example of this. As are the Jobpoint kiosks in UK Jobcentres. They have such a distinctive shape that they are immediately recognisable by anyone who has seen one before.

28 January 2010