Doing Business by Kiosk

Executive Summary

Interactive Kiosks have become a cost effective tool available to businesses that need to compete in an extremely competitive environment today and prepare for the technology of tomorrow. Kiosks can turn six square feet of space into a full service retail outlet. However, this outlet can do much more: operate twenty four hours a day, describe products in multiple languages, and needs no floor space for inventory. In addition, Kiosks are already using many capabilities of the proposed "Information Superhighway" without waiting for the "highway" to be completed. The result: Kiosks offer a means to increase sales with very low operating costs.

Analytic Concepts, a Kiosk developer, has a background unusual in the industry. The company has interactive talents to produce state-of-the-art applications, engineering talents to design and develop premiere hardware and software, plus experience installing and operating Kiosk networks. As a result, Analytic Concepts can produce, install and operate Kiosk networks that contribute to the bottom line without adding personnel or facility burdens.

Background

Even before the "Information Superhighway" was a two lane country road, businesses were taking advantage of many of its proposed capabilities. Interactive Kiosks, made up of a CPU, monitor, video source, touch interface, and often a printer, have been placed in locations as diverse as restaurants, hotels, shoe stores and museums. These Kiosks provide product information, make dinner recommendations, give directions, describe exhibits, and sell products. Often, Kiosks were text based, using copious description to overcome a lack of graphic capabilities.

Because early Kiosks often included proprietary hardware and custom software, they were generally prohibitively expensive, time consuming to create, and difficult or impossible to update. However, several implementations proved that Kiosks could be successful when reliable hardware was married to an application developed for inexperienced, sometimes computer hostile, users and remotely updateable without manual intervention.

New Outlets

The technical advancements which have powered the exploding personal computer market have also contributed to increasing Kiosk capabilities. The same capabilities that deliver audio and video over the Internet can do product demonstrations or animated advertisements on the Kiosk. PC manufacturers have created machines that can send information over a phone line and run interactive programs at the same time without interfering with user interaction. Disk drives used on these same personal computers have become so cost effective that entire databases, motion video segments or thousands of pages of text can be stored on each Kiosk. Mainstream development tools have reduced both time and cost for creating multimedia applications. As a result, Interactive Kiosks have moved from text based information boxes to multilingual salespeople capable of displaying television quality commercials, presenting product choices based on current inventory, accepting orders, and validating credit card information. In short, an effective Kiosk implementation can turn six square feet of space into a retail outlet that attracts customers, presents product details accurately and consistently, processes order forms correctly, authorizes credit card payments, and does all this at a fraction of the annual salary for a typical salesperson.

Making the Connection

Today's Kiosk applications are measured against some very stiff competition. The color monitor, acting as the primary information portal, is very similar in both form and function to a television screen, computer game display, even a motion picture screen. If a Kiosk is going to convert a potential buyer into a customer, it must connect with the user by presenting a crisp clear picture, respond quickly to input, and tell a story.

Catching Their Attention

Before a Kiosk can inform, recommend, present or sell, it must attract a user. The Kiosk must redirect a user's attention from the surrounding product displays, signs and other distractions. To accomplish this, the Kiosk must combine both reliable hardware and dynamic software.

If the Kiosk is not operational, even the most excited user will soon loose interest. And worse, experience shows that one encounter with a "down" Kiosk will require many successful future interactions before the user will regain an excited attitude. This can be extremely important since Kiosk usage often shows a snowball effect. Potential users are more like to investigate the Kiosk if they see the program being accessed, i.e. users breed more users.

Personal computers occasionally encounter problems which prevent them from operating correctly. As a result, the Kiosk must include hardware and software to determine when the program is not operational, then take steps to correct the problem. In the event that internal electronics of the Kiosk fails, the Kiosk enclosure must provide access for quick, easy service to reduce downtime and inconvenience to customers.

Analytic Concepts has developed a proprietary software package, called the Kiosk Survival Kit, designed to maximize uptime. The Survival Kit supports remote communications, data collection and hardware monitoring. When problems occur, the software detects the error and creates a record describing the situation. If a serious problem is encountered, the software can initiate a call to inform the network operations staff. Just as important, the Analytic Concepts' Kiosk design provides for easy access and service when field service personnel arrive.

Once a user invests the effort to approach the Kiosk, they expect to see something new or different from their last experience with the Kiosk. Even if the products presented haven't changed, the presentation must be dynamic enough to make each experience seem new to the user.

Interactive applications developed by Analytic Concepts' staff combine text, graphics, animation, motion video and audio to produce attention grabbing results. The program flow allows novice users to quickly navigate to information they decide is important.

Informing Your Customer

To justify the time and effort users spend interacting with a Kiosk, they demand a substantial reward. Information displayed by the Kiosk must be accurate and up-to-date, or users quickly learn to disregard the Kiosk. Although it's easy to make sure the Kiosk application is up-to-date at the time it's created, insuring it will continue to provide timely information once the program has gone into service is a different story.

For systems that recommend product or actually complete a sales transaction, users expect the product recommended or selected for purchase will be in inventory and available, just as if it had been stocked on a store shelf. Disappointing users, in this case, often sours them on future use of the Kiosk, even if they agree with the recommendation.

By combining Kiosk Survival Kit communications with database driven applications, Analytic Concepts has created applications that continually present timely information. Network implementations have been developed to allow data from legacy systems to be extracted and transferred to Kiosks. The time from legacy data modification until modification of user presentation on the Kiosk can be less than an hour for a fifty Kiosk installation.

Closing The Deal

In today's business environment, Kiosk applications often go beyond providing information to make specific product recommendations or even complete sales transactions. To make effective recommendations or present products for sale, the Kiosk must have access to current inventory information. And when sales are made, Kiosk applications must combine product details with customer and payment data.

In both cases, data must move between Kiosks and existing business systems. This usually means collecting information that isn't currently available and translating between legacy data formats and Kiosk data formats. Resources to support this effort are difficult to find in "downsized" Information Technology departments.

Integrating effective application design with Kiosk Survival Kit tools and Analytic Concepts' own network operations, specific reporting or data transfer capabilities can be developed with extremely low impact on client resources. Analytic Concepts is continuously updating its skill base to make use of the most current network and database systems.