The Self-Service and Kiosk Show a few weeks ago highlighted some key advances in the kiosk industry that have taken place over the past few years. When I attended the show in 2004 it was called the Kiosk Show (sans Self Service) and the most anyone had to say about user experience involved the color and placement of the buttons on the screen. Having been a user experience professional before the domain existed, I felt like I had entered a time warp. This year was different. I was pleasantly surprised by some of the progress that has been made and want to share with you some of the highlights from the show and a personal kiosk experience.
We have known for a while that it is not a good idea to treat a kiosk as a “website on a stick”, but there is now a new awareness of just what that means. In the same way that designers have embraced the challenge of finding new ways for presenting and integrating web content on wireless handhelds and phones (see Adventures with Mobile Mashups), the kiosk world has its own set of challenges and opportunities.
One insidious aspect of designing for kiosks, is that unlike the obvious difference in form factor between a phone and a computer screen, a kiosk often looks like a computer screen/ website in an enclosure. 
And even when the solution is as engaging as this one from Burger King, there are many new challenges to consider. Imagine if Burger King had instead put a computer on a stand with a link to their website. I don’t think as many children would have even considered approaching it.
Some of the same user centered design principles you would apply to a website are still relevant and will get you part of the way toward implementing a successful kiosk solution – ethnographic user research, development of personas, prioritization of user occasions/ tasks, and usability testing. However, there are some additional challenges regarding how to extend traditional web usability thinking to the kiosk world that a few exhibitors and presenters at the show took on:
- Janelle Barlow in her keynote address on the importance of branding in self service projects showed how nondescript a wedding registry kiosk looked against a blank wall and how much more vibrant, engaging and appealing it looked (especially from a distance) when a photograph of a bride was painted on the wall behind it.
- Immersion demonstrated haptic technology that provides very subtle tactile feedback for touchscreen implementations. They provide touch and pressure sensitivity that when combined with sound (which surprisingly not all systems have), make a world of difference for establishing a sensory connection to the screen; it feels almost as if you are pressing a physical button.
- Kerry Bodine from Forrester described the external factors that influence the usability of a kiosk. A kiosk is a three dimensional entity that needs to be thought of as an object in space. It is more like a product than a website in many ways. You need to be able to move around it – to approach it, put your “things” (which in some cases might be suitcases) somewhere, do your work and then move on to the “next” place.
My experience at the Delta Song kiosk on the way to the conference nicely illustrates the “kiosk environment” challenges Kerry presented:
I have been using airline kiosks to check-in for quite some time now. Most of my experience however has been as a business traveler on day trips with no bags to check. On this trip, I wanted to check-in at the counter because my 3 year old daughter (Disney boondoggle) was assigned a seat by herself. I figured this was the appropriate type of problem for a Song employee (presumably possessing flexibility, judgment and warmth) to help me with since there were no other seats available on the flight. I went to the counter and stood in line. It was not very organized – no obvious queuing ropes or other order to the situation so I just stood in front of the counter. After waiting for a couple of minutes, another traveler came up next to me and asked if I was waiting for #12.
Apparently I was supposed to have used the kiosk first, which would have assigned me to a representative. I decided to skip the kiosk because I knew I couldn’t solve my problem without talking to a person. That was not a good move. Not only wouldn’t the counter representative talk to me without using the kiosk first (the system wouldn’t allow it) but once I had checked-in via the kiosk she still couldn’t help me with my seating problem. I had to go to the gate. Even though my 3 year old thought it would be fun to sit by herself, and the thought of having three hours to myself was quite appealing, I didn’t think it was going to work out for the best. (Ultimately the gate attendant couldn’t help me either and I had to ask another passenger to change seats with me).
The point of all this, is that even as a seasoned kiosk user, the fact that I was traveling under different circumstances, the absence of clear or visible signage explaining the “system”, and the inflexibility of the rules, led to a poor experience for me. To their credit, they had been thoughtful about how to facilitate the hand-off from the kiosk to the employee - #12 (impersonal as it was) – but they forgot to tell me about the rules and it didn’t take into account my needs. Sounds like a classic usability problem where the designers of the system are not in touch with the needs and frame of reference of the users of the system.
Having said that, the industry has come a long way and has begun to embrace the need for usability. Rebranding the show as a Self Service (vs. Kiosk) show is not only a good marketing move, but it reflects the transition from considering a kiosk as a piece of hardware to a solution that serves people’s needs. Lastly, a notably absent topic from the agenda this year is how to determine what transactions are well suited for automation and self-service. Maybe we can figure that out for next year.
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