"What Not to Wear" for digital technology, kiosks, and interactive signs

What makes someone qualified to give advice about anything? Experience and knowledge.

My main claim as an analyst (aside from the PhD, which only authorizes me in a narrow scope of the social sciences) is that I read a lot.  I mean, a lot, and always in a wide range of sources, from academic books to what’s on the New York Times best seller list to magazines, web sites, promotional materials, archival matter (right now I’m working on advice columns in African American papers), and yes, even a few blogs. 

One of the few blogs I look at every day is Steve Portigal’s All This Chitta Chatta. Steve has experience and knowledge, but he’s also got an amazing eye, a true sense of the visual landscape, be it urban or rural, Southeast Asian or suburban America. His photographs tell you more than most feature length magazine articles. In terms of marketing and design, developing an acute visual eye is a critical tool, especially for folks in the digital signage and digital media industries. What distinguishes one product from another is often determined in a two-second glance.

One continuing point of interest for Steve is the notion of post-design, fixing a product by adding something exterior to it to explain or enhance its original use. Sometimes people adapt to a new technology (I'm definitely getting used to the self-checkout at the supermarket). Sometimes the technology has to adapt to people. Often designers develop ways of solving an environmental problem – a door handle, a checkout line, a digital menu – and then some aspect of the finished product doesn’t work out as planned after taking it "live."   Post-design is when the user – or designer – has to adapt what exists to the realities of how people think and move through the world. Think about how many of us would crash into doors without the ubiquitous “push” or “pull” signs. My favorite example is of a toilet flusher that requires a posted explanation of how it works.

In the world of kiosks and digital technology we’ve all seen versions of this: the most common is the taped-over swipe slot on a point-of-sale checkout, telling customers to hand their credit card to the clerk rather than swipe it themselves (even though the machine is designed for that!). People with long fingernails, people who don't see or use the stylus, and people with, well, slippery fingers, often complain about different aspects of touchscreen technology. And then, of course, there's the smart clerk who discovered that the wax paper used for picking up bagels and doughnuts works great on credit cards with hard-to-read swipe stripes. These aren't all problems that can be fixed by design, but they do present interesting issues to consider.

This week Steve highlighted a new version of post-design: a Chili’s interactive menu with touch-screen technology has a static sign added to explain to the customer exactly how to use the touch screen. I wonder if the designers saw the separate sign as temporary, until customers adapt to using the digital menu more readily. Or, perhaps, it was too costly to integrate the new directions into the existing terminal.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with having to develop designs post-implementation, it strikes me that the kiosk and digital signage industry needs its own version of “What Not to Wear” – like the do’s and don’ts fashion column that shows real people in real outfits walking down the street, looking extremely sharp or completely off, developers and designers in new technologies need to share what they see in terms of real life usage. While we can laugh at the truly ugly adaptations, it's also important for such a quickly changing industry to develop an archive of design development.

Feel free to send me your examples: photos preferred, of course.

For Alaska Airlines, self-service = big savings + better customer experience

It's rare that businesses really come across a true win-win situation. Normally, when people say win-win, it usually means something more akin to "I win, you don't lose... too much." But Alaska Airlines, in a recent bid to update their terminals to improve customer flow, lessen wait times and congestion, and reduce complaints, has figured out how to do it. (Note: this isn't the first time we've written about their experiments). According to this article at Fast Company, the company has used a combination of traffic control and self-service systems to, "save almost $8 million a year on the [newly-renovated] Seattle terminal if it converts customers the way it has in Anchorage. And the makeover cost just $28 million. Thanks to the fast flow of traffic, trained employees, and eye towards efficiency, "seventy-three percent of Alaska's Anchorage passengers now check in using kiosks or the Web, compared with just 50% across the airline industry." The overall result of this?

During [the author's] two hours of observation in Seattle, an Alaska agent processed 46 passengers, while her counterpart at United managed just 22. United's agents lose precious time hauling bags and walking the length of the ticket counter to reach customers. Alaska agents stand at a station with belts on each side, assisting one passenger while a second traveler places luggage on the free belt. With just a slight turn, the agent can assist the next customer. "We considered having three belts," [Ed White, Alaska's VP of corporate real estate] says. "But then the agent has to take a step. That's wasted time."

We know that self-service alone, even when modestly implemented, has helped airlines to streamline their operations and improve efficiency. However, Alaska shows us how building self-service into the corporation, both figuratively and literally, can boost productivity, lower costs and improve customer satisfaction all at once.

Tags: self service, self check-in, kiosks

HP launches new touch-screen desktops

As reported in Advertising Age, of all places, HP is getting serious about the touchscreen terminal market, if their latest offerings are any indication. While many other manufacturers have been playing in this space for a while, HP's new line of computers is... well, I'll just say it... sexy -- if you could ever call a touchscreen computer sexy, anyway.

Interestingly, while Dell, IBM and others have always pointed their touchscreen offerings squarely at the business market, HP's line is definitely designed for consumers. I'm not entirely sure how or why they think adding a touchscreen to a desktop PC is going to empower consumers to work faster, smarter, or just have more fun, but then I'm not a consumer product marketing specialist, so perhaps the obvious is just eluding me right now.

Tags: kiosks, touch screen, touchscreen

Introduction to digital signage webinar coming up on June 12th

There's been a lot of talk lately about digital signage, and specifically, treating the store as a new medium for communicating everything from product advertisements to late-breaking news and important information. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, there's no doubt that the industry is growing at a fast clip, and a lot of retailers, brands and marketing agencies are clamoring to learn more about its efficacy as a marketing medium.

While there are a lot of proclaimed "experts" in the field, POPAI, the global organization for Marketing at Retail, has decided to start holding bi-monthly "Introduction to Digital Signage" webinars to get more of their members -- as well as interested non-members -- properly oriented in this complex and evolving field. The first of these webinars is coming up this week - Thursday, June 12, at 1PM EDT.

If you're already an expert in the field of digital signage, this webinar isn't for you. But if you're just starting out in the industry, or if you have a client or partner that is, it will give you an excellent introduction to the exciting world of digital out-of-home media.

Specifically designed to help newcomers see past the industry hype and focus on the projects, business cases and best practices that have been successful in the real world, POPAI's Introduction to Digital Signage webinar is a great way to spend an hour of your time -- and only $50 -- to jump-start your understanding of what works and what doesn't in the digital signage world.

The topics we'll cover include:

• An introduction to the digital signage market with some basic market history and analysis,
• A look at some of the most common usage scenarios,
• An explanation of the components used in typical digital signage networks,
• A discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of using digital signage, and
• An examination of some of the most common pitfalls and problems that occur, and ways to avoid them in the first place.

So please join us on Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 1:00pm EDT


If you're interested, you can click here to sign up now! You have to sign up by the end of the day on Wednesday the 11th in order to participate, so don't wait too long if you want to check it out.

Tags: digital signage

Fixing your bathroom sink...with your cellphone

The newest digital technologies face one enormous non-technological hurdle: getting ordinary people to use them.

According to mobile content researcher M:Metrics, however, only 6% of U.S. cell phone subscribers used their device to watch a video recently. At the same time, advertising expenditures on mobile ads are projected to be in the billions this year. Right now most marketers are using text ads, with web and video placements in development. Not surprisingly, iPhone owners outpaced all other cell phone users in their downloading and web searching by a huge margin.

But Home Depot is counting on two developments to move video use on mobile devices into everyday experience. First, new technologies make it easier for users to search for, watch, and share, and save mobile videos in close to real time, even going so far as to store playlists on your device.

The second development is smart marketing: Home Depot has developed a series of “how to” videos that are accessible in store and easily downloadable to cell phones. Imagine getting information from a helpful clerk about installing that cool Indonesian-looking ceiling fan, only to get home and get involved in other things like making dinner, driving to a soccer game, and watching the Stanley Cup Finals. By the time you finally get started on that ceiling fan, you wish you’d taken your memory-enhancing supplements that morning. But now, while you were in the store you could have entered an SMS short code into your cell phone and downloaded the instructional video. Back home, you can watch the video and remember to put the mounting plate in before you attach the rotor blades.

What’s great about Home Depot’s strategy is that it offers a necessary and ordinary application for mobile device use. It may be a while before I’m downloading and watching television shows on my iPhone (after all, someone needs to buy me one first) – but I’d get the instructional videos immediately. That's the theory, at least, and Avot Media and Home Depot are already trying out instructional videos downloaded to your cell phone to help with the installation of a new line of ceiling fans.

I don’t have any marketing data on this, but personally, this approach to in-store media is a lot more appealing than video cooking demonstrations in supermarkets. The current formats still seem like 1950s-era Home Ec movies rather than Emeril or even Julia, though I admit I'm biased by my "cooking is an art form" mentality.

On the other hand, my home repair skills are not nearly as eclectic, innovative, or confident as my cooking, so I think I’ll do what the instructions tell me for now. And my favorite part? If I need to, I can always go back and take another quick look on my cell phone. One of our first home-improvement projects ever was putting up a shed from a kit. It came with a video, which we popped into the VCR (yes, that long ago), watched, and then promptly forgot as we mounted the window upside down and on the wrong wall. Perhaps we might have avoided these mistakes if there could have been a quick check on the cell phone video.

Tags: self service, mobile, video

Another thing that keeps me up at night...

So I've been a little remiss on posting lately, but I promise I have a really good reason. I'm not normally inclined to post personal stuff on these blogs, but a lot of you folks already knew that my wife and I were expecting our first baby sometime around now. Last week, he decided to show himself to the world. Say hello to baby Liam:

The surprised look on his face is because I was telling him about the digital signage industry at the time -- the number of overlapping vendors, the lack of standards or formal metrics, the continual volume of hype fed into the channel. But fear not, a solution is at hand: he promises to start working on the problem as soon as he learns what his fingers are for.

Thanks for your patience, folks. Things on the blogs should get back to normal in a few weeks :)

- Bill

Giant's easySHOP gives self-checkout a new meaning

In what might be described as an evolution of the price-check kiosk, Giant Super Food Stores is testing out a new system called easySHOP which allows customers to bypass checkout lines altogether by scanning and bagging items as they pick them up in the aisles. As this article on Shopper Culture notes, the system

"lets people scan and bag items as they shop throughout the store, then pay at a self-service check-out kiosk and leave. In other words, groceries go into your cart from the shelves and don’t leave until you get to your car.

"easySHOP requires Giant’s BONUSCARD loyalty card. The system aims to empower customers by putting more control in their hands. Further, the perception is that scanning one’s own groceries is faster than having them scanned in a check-out line. Finally, the scanner lets people keep a rolling tally of their bill, helping them stay within their budget."

As self-checkout lanes have gotten only a mixed review so far, this program could potentially offer time savings that make early glitches and an unnatural-seeming change to shopping behavior worthwhile.

Tags: self-checkout, self-service, easySHOP

Eat your words. Digitally, that is.

How far should self-service electronic checkout go? Most people I talk to complain about self check registers at the supermarket. I’m often in agreement. My first suggestion: give these machines a better voice! IBM, NCR, other self checkout manufacturers, why not have George Clooney asking me how many mangoes are in the bag? Another suggestion: often, when the conveyor belt fills up slightly the faceless voice instructs you to stop scanning items and fill your bags. In these cases, give us more than two seconds to actually get it done before asking "If you are done scanning items, please pay!" The machine may be super-human, but it takes me a little while to get my items bagged.

Now, I know what you’re saying: Annie, it's a computer voice. You can ignore it. But the technology itself is not at fault here. It's being rushed and herded needlessly that ruins the retail experience, at the command of its manufacturers, probably at the request of their customers. These companies might do well to remember the difference between efficiency for consumers’ convenience and efficiency for their profit, though.

Because I’m a social scientist at heart, I turn my supermarket trips into research opportunities. Every time I’ve observed the self-checkouts, I see at least two flashing help lights out of five open registers, with customers waiting for the floor manager to key in a missed product code. At the same time, I also see workers hovering, often at the end of the conveyor belt, waiting to help bag or get carts. What does this tells us? Supermarket executives have yet to figure out how real and digital workers fit together.

Here’s an example: It’s a quiet Tuesday morning in my local supermarket: just me and the senior citizen crowd (my favorite informal market research group -- understudied and gregarious, what more could you ask for?) There were a lot of supermarket workers standing around. I hate having to continually explain my bag preference (reusable supermarket bags and as few store bags as possible), so I choose the self -service checkout. So what happens? I’ve got two items scanned, haven’t even been pestered by the digital voice yet, and a supermarket worker arrives and begins bagging my groceries in what I have now come to call “Pittsburgh Style” – one item per plastic bag, no matter how small. So much for my reduced carbon footprint.

Most people adapt to and accept self-service kiosks. ATMs are a prime example. The only time I need a bank teller is when I have a transaction that’s too complex for the ATM. And amazingly, bank tellers are often some of the nicest and most helpful service employees in the pantheon of service economy personnel. When I go into the bank, I truly want their help. But most of the time, self-service banking is a minimally involved task. (You put in the card, you get money, you check your balance, or, if you’re lucky, you make a deposit.)

Checking out at the grocery is an entirely different story. As in many retail contexts, people have more complex needs. I am amazed at the array of vegetable and fruit choices displayed on the monitor – even so, this is, indeed, where most people get waylaid on the road to self service self sufficiency. We know what we’re buying – but does the machine categorize it in any way remotely similar to our lexicon of edible greens? Are those JUMBO navel oranges or MEDIUM ones? Are green beans under G for green or B for beans?

A new market survey shows that consumers are so accustomed to banking through ATMs that they’re frustrated when not available. Now, take this survey with a grain of self-serving self-service salt (because the survey’s sponsor was NCS, who makes the systems.) Another research note: keep in mind that the survey was done on-line, which means the sample is already skewed in the direction of technology-capable individuals. None of my informal 70 – 80 year old market research group friends are comfortable with ATMs. Indeed, some of them were quite adept at online banking, but they limited their use of ATMs, citing concerns about safety and ability to follow directions. With a large portion of the American population heading into the AARP demographic, digital technology companies should design self-service interfaces in secure environments that give older people more time, offers better readability, and provides service options with greater clarity.

Having read this, I wonder when (or if) people will come to regard self checkout systems as a supermarket necessity, as ATMs have become to banks. I know we're not there yet. The grocers, it seems, are having a hard time determining when consumers want flesh and blood help as a side dish or a main course.

Tags: self-service, kiosks, self checkout

DVDPlay introduces loyalty program

So you've probably realized by now that I'm pretty bullish on Redbox and their competition, who have stumbled upon a new and different way to let people rent movies. While Redbox makes the bulk of the news (and consequently gets most of the coverage over here), competitor DVDPlay has introduced some news-worthy functionality that Evan at StorefrontBacktalk picked up yesterday. Specifically, the kiosk introduces a rent-10-get-one-free loyalty program that simply uses a renter's email address to keep track of the number of movies rented.

Rental movies are an affordable luxury, what with today's high prices keeping more people at home more often than before, so fostering loyalty to a particular mechanism makes a lot of sense. These kiosks face intense competition from Blockbuster and their kin (however lame they may currently appear), Netflix, cable and satellite VOD, video over the Internet from services like Apple's iTV and Amazon's Unbox, and, of course, the bevy of other DVD rental kiosks out there. Encouraging loyal might prove to be a boon for DVDPlay while providing genuine value to customers. And, of course, if they're harvesting user rental histories, it probably won't be long until we see further personalization features like Netflix's suggested rental lists.

Tags: self-service, kiosks

Should Blockbuster buy Redbox?

That's the question that NewTeeVee's Chris Albrecht asks in a recent post at the site's blog. While Blockbuster clearly needs to do something to avoid getting further eviscerated by Netflix and a host of others, their current plan to build a set-top box and allow direct download video rentals might not be the right course to take at this point. After all, as Albrecht notes, "getting into the hardware game will be an expensive endeavor, especially in an increasingly crowded field already packed with big names like Apple, TiVo, Xbox 360, Vudu and soon the Netflix LG box."

Instead of going that route, what about picking up Redbox, whose self-service kiosks are already deployed to over 6,800 sites across the US? He makes a pretty interesting case for the plan:

Going out into the real world to download something may seem like an unnecessary step, but it’s actually more of a transitional one because it combines elements people are already familiar with.

First, people still go to video stores. In adding these kiosks to their real-world locations, Blockbuster would bridge the the familiar experience of browsing the aisles for a movie with the more unfamiliar one of digital delivery.

Second, by using existing set-top services like TiVo, people wouldn’t feel like they have to buy a new device, or worry about buying one that will die quickly (read: HD DVD).

Finally, by leveraging the existing Redbox kiosks in non-video locations like grocery stores, Blockbuster could take advantage of impulse renting. People are already used to the idea of DVDs being sold in supermarkets, this would nudge them a little further and into downloads.

I don't think a lot of marketers realize just how difficult it is to break people of their habits. I also get the feeling that too many of them don't fully understand that when people are out shopping for one thing -- say shampoo or cereal -- they're primed to be on the lookout for other things, even other unrelated things, hence the appeal of Redbox's kiosks in all sorts of different retail stores. This is just my personal opinion, but Blockbuster buying Redbox makes a lot more sense than trying to launch a VOD product or buy Circuit City, which was their new (yet definitely not improved) plan as of this morning.

Tags: kiosks, redbox, blockbuster

Touch screen voting is stupidly expensive

It's not often that I would call The Inquirer -- the tech industry's closest thing to a tabloid newspaper -- a source of insightful and well-balanced opinion, but their article today about the costs of touchscreen voting just hit too close to my own heart to ignore. Citing a study (pdf) conducted by the Maryland voting integrity group Save Our Votes, they note that:

• The voting machines themselves cost about $3,000 apiece.
• Maryland's counties took out $67 million in loans to buy those machines and will be paying them through 2014, despite the fact the kiosks will be out of use by 2010.
• By the end of this election year Maryland will have spent over $97.5 million on the voting machines it's planning to scrap.
• Beyond the cost of the machines, the state will have paid Diebold at least $44 million for operating, maintaining and storing the actual machines as well as programming, testing, and transportation services to and from precincts, as well as training poll workers and performing "voter outreach" to promote their use among the electorate.
  

In all, "SaveOur Votes analysed the cost of touch screen electronic voting machines in those counties. In most of the counties their average costs per voter increased 179 per cent. At least one county saw its costs per voter increase 866 per cent, from a total cost of about $22,000 in 2001 to $266,000 in 2007."

Now I know that governments have a habit of making bad decisions and paying too much for them, but an 866% increase for worse performance is pretty stunning even for them. Throw in the fact that every known e-voting platform has (or can be) hacked, and I'd say this is perhaps the most ill-fated electronic governance project ever. Period.

Tags: electronic voting, kiosks, self-service

Point of Sale, with an emphasis on point

I read an article in RetailWire that took me back to my first job out of college. A very optimistic man hired me as an assistant business manager for a million dollar sports and day camp. I quickly mastered and streamlined almost every feature of the job, except for one thing that caused my customers and myself endless grief: our invoice forms. Neither our paper supplier nor the Harvard MBA above me could create a single, adaptable template for all of our transactions, and on the day I left, I piled my desk with boxes full of the ten different invoice formats that we used.

While every service worker on the front lines has their horror story, customers also have their own version: checkout purgatory. I’m working on some ethnographic research (translate: hanging out and watching at the local grocery) about how workers and customers fair with newly automated supermarket registers. Here’s what I’ve learned so far: anyone who buys non-iceberg lettuce eventually has to hit the Help button. Checkout clerks develop informal systems of either perpetually hovering over or completely ignoring those flummoxed by the self-service lanes. I’m waiting for the day that road rage morphs over into the checkout line – and with the advent of self-checkout, I believe the moment is nigh.

Efficiency is a complicated goal. Stores like it because it increases sales and decreases waste. Consumers like it because they believe it leaves them more time for other pursuits. But technology can’t function efficiently unless both servers and customers are getting what they need. I’m originally from New York, so I’m from a tribe of people who historically rank among the most impatient ever patented. I want my stuff yesterday. But even I would rather have a knowledgeable person waiting on me than one who rushes me into buying things I don’t need. The only thing worse than a New Yorker in a hurry is a New Yorker who has to make a return.

Returns, exchanges, and special orders are often their own brand of nightmare. I alternate between pity for the poor retail manager who has to sort these out and rage at the stupidity of systems that funnel problems through the same line as people with a single pair of socks. Stores that carry a wide range of merchandise seem to struggle with this much more than, say, your friendly neighborhood mega bookstore that smartly has its Help kiosk in the dead center of the store, visible from the front door, and can link to their online ordering in seconds.

Some analysts would have you believe that reducing the need for smart staff is a laudable goal –- especially since worker efficiency is and always will be a complicated variable. I’m impressed that companies might trust me enough to return my own incorrectly sized shoes to the rack with a PIN device set up to monitor inventory. But I’m still going to wait for the sales associate who knows where the right size shoes might be or what alternatives the store might have or whether they even look good on me. Bottom line: digital technology and a good retail sales force should also be synchronized rather than pitted against each other. No matter how customer-centric a POS system is, the service person who knows your needs will always be more than peripheral.

Tags: self-service, customer experience, POS

Reactrix to add transaction capabilities

As cool as a Reactrix setup looks while walking through a mall concourse or (increasingly) in movie theaters, I have to wonder whether their latest announcement -- namely, that they'd be adding the ability to conduct sales transactions via applications running on their network -- really made any sense. According to MediaPost,

Once a user is engaged with the experience, opportunities will naturally arise to offer promotions and actual sales of products from the brand advertiser, [CEO Mike Ribero] adds.

Ribero said commercial transactions could be handled one of two ways: through a credit-card swipe (or a wallet sensor for cards with Blink-style capability) or with new technology that ties mobile devices to credit cards, in which the consumer enters a confirmation code from the display.

It's one thing to say that people who interact with your virtual Honda salesroom (or whatever) will be able to remember the brand later. However, like those virtual shop windows that have been getting some buzz lately, this medium definitely seems more of an experiential experiment to me, and certainly not part of any "normal" purchase process that I'd be familiar with. That means Reactrix will have to convince a whole bunch of people that using their system is just another acceptable way of completing a transaction. They could be banking on the fact that younger generations are already (slowly!) getting used to the idea of using contactless systems and even their mobile phones as payment devices, and counting on this generation to look for more unique and gratifying ways to actually complete a purchase. For most people though, I don't see the demand or the advantage.

Tags: self-service, kiosks, reactrix

Japanese restaurant menus go high-tech

The Japanese have invented some pretty remarkable gadgets in the last couple of decades, but this one is just plain over-the-top. As reported at The Raw Feed, "Japan's TEC has created a restaurant table with a built-in 3-D LCD screen. The table, called the Tobidasu Menu, lets you browse food choices. The piece de resistance is that you can select each item on the touch-screen table for full-size, 3-D view. The table shows what your food will look like sitting in front of you."

According to one of the comments on that post, the Japanese are used to ordering food by appearance, and restaurants (even classy ones) frequently have pictures or even models of the food as well as a text description. Still, I have to believe that this kind of device is designed to be a novelty more than an actual ordering accessory, but I could be wrong.

Tags: self-service, kiosks

Largest Hardee's franchisee tests self-service kiosks

According to QSR Magazine, Boddie-Noell Enterprises, the largest Hardee's franchise operator in the US, has begun testing self-service kiosks from provider EMN8 in three pilot locations. The pilot is intended to, "test the level of guest adoption of the technology, improvement in speed of customer service, and lift in average check the franchisee can achieve."

Hardees and others continue to test the devices for a number of purported reasons, including lifting the average ticket size (by using the kiosk to recognize and push up-sell and cross-sell opportunities), reduce average wait times during peak periods, and generally improve customer satisfaction. It's interesting, then, that none of the big guys have ever moved beyond the pilot phase, despite years of new initiatives. Maybe the cost of the implementation is too high. Maybe it requires too much ongoing maintenance. Or maybe it's too hard to educate the typical QSR patron about a new way of conducting a familiar transaction. But whatever the problem(s), it seems to be big enough to keep ordering kiosks from really taking off.

That having been said, these QSR chains keep trying new technologies and business partners, so it's clear that some of them really do want to see a viable ordering kiosk solution become available. Given the successes the airline industry have had with self-service, QSR does seem like the kind of environment that could really benefit from it. When and where that "eureka!" moment will finally happen, though, is still anyone's guess.

Tags: kiosks, self-service, QSR