The School of Hard Knocks

You have a hot web site. You know this because of all the positive feedback you're received via E-Mail and/or phone. You've spent a great deal of time, money, and sweat developing your site. It's cool, hip, and has all the latest toys and dynamics. Maybe it even has some really cool Flash and some slick graphic roll-overs. No other competitor even comes close to touching your site (no pun indended).

Then a brainstorm: why not expose your ultra-hot site to the public via a kiosk? Your logic is sound: increased exposure, branding, more hits, increased sales, and other obvious tangibles. You take your idea to the boss. He loves it - and why shouldn't he, right?

You get promoted to VP of the newly created Internet Kiosk Department. You spend $500,000 on kiosk hardware, contracts, and software. You deploy your kiosks in ultra-hot locations. Success is just around the corner. Minutes away. At your fingertips…

A month later, your company declares the kiosk deployment as a complete failure. Only a small handful of visitors really used your kiosks. The statistics from the kiosks showed that most visitors spent only a brief moment experiencing your site. Most walked away quite early in the session, possibly frustrated, angry, and/or confused. You find yourself without a without a job and on the streets.

Is Your Hot Web Site "Kiosk Ready"?

Just because you’re providing your site to the public via kiosk does not mean you have a winner by any means. Most "hot web site" designs assume that everyone knows how a web page works, and that everybody will be at home with the interface. In addition, many - if not most - web sites assume their visitors are net-savvy users, that their monitor is directly in front of their face, and that they are navigating via mouse.

But how many of the above assumptions are correct on a public access kiosk? If you designed your enclosures correctly and included a track ball (instead of a touch screen), you could at least eliminate the monitor and mouse issues. And if your entire target audience has been exposed to the web, you have much more liberty with your implementation - at least to a point.

However, your real target audience is more likely to be Joe or Jane Q. Public, whom may or may not know how hang 10 like the pros, or for that matter - may have never even seen a web site before in their life.

Tips for Creating a Successful Internet / Intranet Informational Kiosk Solution

If you're thinking of taking your web site to the public via interactive kiosk, you might want to evaluate your site and/or apply some of the following tips and hints:

Tip #1: The "Touchable" Web Site

Your web site should be designed to be 100% "touchable". By touchable, I mean that it is intuitively obvious that objects on the screen - when touched - will do something. Adhere to this tip even if you're not using a touch screen so, your non-net savvy users will also be able to figure it out. Take a good look at your site and evaluate its "touchability". Expose your site to a handful of people who have not used the web and experience your site though their actions. It may surprise you.

Tip #2: Try to Avoid Frames

Frames should probably not be considered unless the frame is permanent and does not require scrolling. Frames can cause confusion - both in navigation and in scrolling - especially if your implementation is touch-based and uses large "scroll buttons" to scroll. The buttons will only work if the correct frame is active, which happens naturally with a mouse / track ball click, but not with a touch screen.

Tip #3: Avoid "Blue" Hyperlinks

Design your kiosk so that even Gram or Gramps could use it. Depending upon the target audience, this could mean absolutely no text-based hyperlinks within your site (!). I’m pretty sure that if Gram has never seen a web site, she also doesn’t know that if you touch an underlined text component it "does something".

Tip #4: Select an Appropriate Font

The previous tip makes this next statement somewhat redundant but is worth another mention: no teensy weensy fonts. Not only is it difficult to read and/or touch but it breaks the hyperlink rule. Think big! Most of the ultra-popular sites have tiny text to jam as much information as possible on the page. Providing too much information via kiosk is an application killer anyway, so limit your information, and make it very quick and easy to read.

Tip #5: Avoid Forms and Large Data Requests

If your audience is potentially non-web savvy, do not use forms to collect information. The user will not know that they need to "activate" a field by touching it, and the experience will be nothing short of frustrating and humiliating. Use alternative methods for data collection. For example, design an easy-to-use question-by-question interface (perhaps non-net based) with a single input line per screen that contains automatic focus adjustments. Also (as with any kiosk application) don't ask them to type in too much information - they won't.

Tip #6: Consider a Physical Keyboard

If your application requires user input, you may want to consider providing a physical keyboard (versus a touch-type keyboard). The decision should be made on the amount of information required for collection. If a user has to touch-type in their name, address, city , state, etc., you’re pushing the limits of their patience - especially if you force them to touch-type in all that stuff (it takes forever!). If it isn’t easy and fast, re-evaluate and do everything you can to make it easier and faster. This could mean providing a physical keyboard (or membrane keyboard) at the kiosk.

Conclusion: Test Your Site with Your Target Audience!

To measure your site with respect to "instant kiosk success", evaluate your site by pre-exposing it to a selected cross-section of your target audience. This is very easy to do (check with Grandma and see if she’s available) and it will provide you with an abundant amount of very useful information quickly and inexpensively. You’ll find it’s a lot less expensive than placing a gozillion kiosks out in the field only to learn they completely miss the comprehension of your target audience.

About the Author

Dave Heyliger (heyliger@rockmedia.com) is founder and president of Rocky Mountain Multimedia, Inc. (www.rockmedia.com), and has been creating kiosk software and interface solutions for hundreds of clients since 1993. Feel free to check out this and any previous article contained within this series by visiting the online section at www.rockmedia.com/kioskmagazine.html.