Recently I began a new project that started off with the client saying "…remember people have fat fingers, the machine calibration is off and it has to engage with you from across the store."
 
This is how they prefaced a redesign of a retail shopping experience touch screen kiosk. I was wondering how I was going to be innovative with foreseeable limitations and not to mention it’s running on IE6. We discussed the goals for the project to measure an increase in usage, which would lead to higher retention rates and word-of-mouth marketing from delighted customers. In other words they wanted a great shopping experience.
 
I had to see first hand what the user experience was like so, I joined my dad on one of his weekly shopping trips and noticed immediately that he walked right up to the machine and began to swipe his card. What came next was series of expletive phrases as the machine neither read his card nor made his life any simpler. I decided to help him out and complete the transaction and even I was astounded at how bad the UI was for something that was to be so simple. This gave me a great foundation to work because I envisioned my dad being the ideal customer. Someone in his 60's expecting technology to work as easy as opening his refrigerator door and if it didn’t he would just go to the nearest drive thru if he was that hungry.
 
I started doing research for the project and I wanted to get some great background research on touch screen kiosks that are working today that provide a good experience. This had me wondering what the key points that define a successful kiosk user experience are:
 
1.The kiosk is positioned at the point of use
2.It is not cumbersome or clunky and takes less than 30 secs to complete
3.It requires no extra time or effort on my part
4.It's an extension of what I'm doing or enhances the experience.
  
After defining these points I wondered what kiosks were doing a good job of this. Immediately my banks ATM came to mind and a recent trip to a Redbox machine from the other night.
 
While experiences with these machines have been positive I wondered how many more were negative. Something else that comes to mind is the self-service ticket booth at airports; they welcome me, get me my documents and move me along. With that said I wanted to dig deeper into the research so I went back to the store and watched as people used the current version of the kiosk documenting their process and experiences. The one that stood out the most was a lady that ran her card under it and it said she didn’t have the right credentials. She immediately turned to me and said she just paid for it and wondered how long it must take to update. I thought to myself how un-technical that sounded because I knew it should work right away. She said, "…screw it" and walked away. Her experience was terrible, she claimed she paid for that feature and now when its time to renew she may not based on one bad experience.
 
Watching all this had me feeling like the best metric for success for this design project was to revisit the business challenge and align myself with the objective of designing this kiosk experience so that its satisfying and effective for the consumer.
 
So the design work begins. It begins in my mind like a movie…a compelling intro, a great climatic moment and then an ending that sums it all up. This compelling intro will get the users attention from afar and illustrate how simple the kiosk is to use. The climatic moment will be the new sleek interface that invites the user to take action and shows the interaction as it takes place. Screen resolution for this device is 1280 x1024 on a 19" monitor and keeping to the standard measurement of "finger friendly" buttons need to be around 50 –75 pixels thus ensuring clear readability and not cluttering the screen.
 
After about 4 versions of comps and showing those to get feedback I have landed on a design that I am now ready to flush out and start user testing. In my mind this is one of the most solid forms of measuring success for kiosk design since its primary use is from hundreds of people on a daily basis.
 
I will continue this post with details from the testing and then a summary after launch and feedback so stay posted…

Check out this concept of thinking about an analog situation and finding an innovative digital solution. Love the hand gestures, amazing usability.

Multi Touch Light Table: GERGWERK from GERG WERK on Vimeo.

Some great insight into the workings of the Amazon iphone app by Mobile Tuts here.

The guys over at Six Revisions have posted a great article on a topic I'm starting to hear more and more about: Native Apps vs. Web Apps on the iPad/iPhone. At Rockfish Interactive we have had the opportunity to work on several iPad apps and lots of iPhone apps and the one thing that gets brought is "...is this better served as a web app?" At first I didn't see why the need but after hearining feedback from users using our aps it makes perfect sense that the web app model is still alive and kicking. Native apps are cool and take full advantage of the platform and what it has to offer but the limitations of being device specific and the case with the iPad not printing and not saving causes complications the user doesn't seem to like. 

Obviously with the power of HTML 5 and CSS3 growing I think the more viable approach will be the web apps but until browsers inherently come with plugins such as Unity or Flash i think most game developers will stick to the native approach.  

A look inside the iAd campaign promoting the Nissan LEAF here

I agree with Flytip (http://www.flytip.com) over at R/GA about this App the Explorer by the American Museum of Natural History. Having the opportunity to work on a Big box retailer app that will be launching soon the custom experience and the integration of the maps makes this a cool app indeed.