touch me to begin
active technologies - any human interaction device - iPhone, kiosk, chumby
rules of thumb for touch screen
- need to attract - snag/inform potential user - touch here to begin
- engage - make the application steps very obvious - assume nothing about the user’s knowledge of common UI conventions
- retain -
- fat fingers - move nav to bottom of the screen so users don’t end up mashing the screen with their palm - also try to extend hit areas a good deal past the call to action graphic
- just press - even though you can handle drag and drop, don’t. just press, not release, press
- accessibility
- visual impaired - high contrast, color palettes that suit most common color blindness
- wheelchair accessible - oversize your screen and allow display to be shifted
- time out - most people will walk away from your app part way through
- easy build - loads of environmental changes between dev and deploy - make it a one button build between the systems (turn off mouse cursors, etc)
wayfinder
digital concierge for 7 story plaza/shopping center * make anything you can into a button - if returning search results, make the entire listing a link/button, not just a “find this” link. * try to make the data that is displayed contextual to the environment - orient maps to the direction the kiosk is facing * build a tool to manage your data in its final format
what worked
- TXS/XMLFS - move transaction work over onto the kiosks and have them interface with the network on there own. if possible, put content to the machine and have it polled locally, instead of hitting a live database
- JSFL - each map/store/movieclip instance needed to be managed in a
- test test test - paper prototype like crazy, its much faster and cheaper than live flash testing. easy way to trim unused functionality
- logging interaction - time on each screen, every click, abandon screens, use of back button, … everything
- testers - get some interns and have them brute force test the apps - young blood with rip your code apart looking for developer mistakes
- remote monitoring - have each kiosk produce a heartbeat to check for functionality. build in fail over states (kiosk #1 transaction server goes down, but front end is still up, send data calls over to kiosk #2)
- client relationship - any client that is going to come into this field with have a) cash to throw at the tasks and b) little knowledge of the specific technology
what didn’t worked
- TXS/XMLFS - a bit rough for developers to interface during dev
- dijkstra - the wayfinder app - hard computational work in flash for route finder tasks was a processor beast
- bizarro errors - “would you like to cancel all scripts”
- dying computers - vent your hardware, that gear gets toasty
- screen calibration - things move out of spec
- updating the app in the field - it was a very manual process, should have expanded the one-click build over to deployment
- environment - kiosks are traditionally very brochureware, it is still a little tricky to get some people to make the jump over to richer apps
how we improved things
- environment - they quit and started their own company with a more conducive developer culture
- TXS/XMLFS - scrapped and rewrote it via HTTP and REST. it is now much more friendly for developers
- dijkstra - removed the app logic and moved it over onto a piece of bigger iron and rewrote it in a server language. using flash as more presentational than
- disc death - ignore, not a developer problem
- updating - one click build and deploy system
- easter eggs - come one, you know why its done
where things are going
- experiments - connected network kiosks, spatially aware devices (change content as people/environment changes)
- from kiosk to POS/terminal apps - anywhere a device needs to provide access to only a specific set of commands (no use for keyboard and mouse)
upsides
- bye bye browser - locked hardware and software set. feel free to rush headlong into quirks-mode type behavior
- there is money to be made - much of the market is still under-served, traditional kiosks are giving way to more interactive experiences/devices (ie: chumby)
