Are you ready for the self-service restaurant?

RetailWire has a neat article (free registration required) on a concept restaurant that recently opened in Germany. Called Baggers, the shop positions itself as the restaurant of the retro-future, and has customers place orders via touchscreen, with a complex system of rails and trolleys used to deliver food right to the table.

Never mind that the interior of the place looks like Rube Goldberg tried to redesign Chutes and Ladders, my question is whether people are ready for a do-it-yourself restaurant experience outside of a QSR or fast-casual environment?

I have to admit that I'm a sucker for gimmicks, so I'd probably give the restaurant a shot just so I could see my order whizzing across the restaurant and down to my place setting, but after that, I'm not so sure. What happens if I drop a fork and need a new one? Is there an easy way to order a drink refill? What if I spill something?

One of the nice things about going to a sit-down dining establishment is that you know that there's a small army of people waiting on you -- literally. That's why we (or I, at least) get upset when service is lousy -- it's like we've been betrayed. So while the Baggers concept certainly looks cool, I have a lot of questions that I'd want answered before settling on whether it's a good idea or not.

Tags: self-service, interactive kiosks, restaurant kiosks

Marc Ecko's digital grafitti inspires interaction

Maybe it's a kiosk, or maybe it's an interactive digital sign, but whatever you call it, it's pretty slick.

According to Ads of the World, "Marc Ecko wants to promote his roots and love for graffiti. Digital citylights are created that consists of an LCD and a bluetooth interface. People will get the possibility to access the citylight via bluetooth with their cell phones and spray their own graffiti with the cursor of their phone."

While the electronic poster doesn't really provide any kind of self-service function, the ability to engage passers by and engage users with a unique interactive experience puts this thing -- whatever it actually is -- firmly in the "kiosk" camp for me.

There's no word on whether this is a one-off project or part of a larger deployment, but JC Decaux has experimented with similar interactive advertising devices in the past, and in fact this could be the same exact hardware used for some of those past campaigns.

Tags: interactive kiosks, digital signage, out-of-home advertising

Sony bets the bank on PS3 kiosks

Ok, that's not completely accurate. More like, "Sony bets PS3 kiosk might work inside a bank," at least according to this little blurb from GamerNode. All joking about needing to take out a second mortgage to afford the PS3 aside, apparently the firm believes that by offering some entertainment for bank patrons and/or their children through a lush in-bank environment dubbed "THE BANK ZONE," they'll build some positive brand image (and of course the bank hopes that the additional level of service will help separate them from their competition).

No word on how many BANK ZONE environments are set to be deployed (the current ones are designed and implemented by Sony Computer Entertainment Korea), but my guess is that they'll never see the light of day in the US. Still, seeing a PS3 demo loop of Metal Gear Solid 4 or Final Fantasy XIII might compel the average patron to withdraw a few hundred more... just in case.

Tags: self-service, kiosks, PS3

Sequoia Media brings DIY movie making to Wal-Mart

While photo kiosks have become commonplace in big-box retailers like Wal-Mart, vendors have been looking for ways to provide more services through these devices in order to boost sales. I've seen kiosks that let you send finished photos away to be blown up into posters, and others that let you screen photos onto T-shirts and other soft goods, but this offering from Sequoia Media is the coolest extension of the photo kiosks that I've yet seen. From this MediaPost writeup:

The myMovieMaker service, available in Fujifilm photo kiosks at Wal-Mart stores, lets customers turn digital photos into personalized DVD movies for between $12.86 and $16.86. "We're targeting a market really underserved--the photo mom, the chief memory officer out at daily events," says Terry Dickson, Sequoia Media's vice president of marketing and business development. "They're busy. They can be at the
soccer game one day, the dance recital the next, taking photos with a phone or digital camera and then take the photos to your retail store or workstation at home and create a memory."

The company built buzz for the service by offering a free demo of the technology online, letting anybody build a short video by uploading photos into the system. While the web demo lets users email their short creations to friends and family, in order to create longer, more elaborate clips and save their work, they'll have to go to the in-store kiosks.

Tags: self-service, Wal-Mart, kiosks

No firewall + windows registry entry = BAD!

I can't claim the title as my own, as I pilfered it from a colleague who forwarded me this story from Storefront Backtalk about the now-infamous hacker breakin at TJX that led to the theft of hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information. While the company had attributed the theft to rogue hackers who had infiltrated the company's wifi network from a nearby parking lot, it now looks as like the attackers may have instead used an unprotected kiosk as the entry vector. The kiosk in question is normally used for taking employment applications (you've probably seen them at your local department store or supermarket). The current theory is that the attackers opened the back of the kiosk and attached a USB drive to the device that was then able to download software onto the kiosk's hard disk, and ultimately the corporate network (which it was connected to directly, sans firewall). Once inside the network, the attackers made quick work of any other security precautions, and went on to steal the data.

So let's do a quick review of what went wrong:

1. Access to the employment kiosks' innards (e.g. computer hardware) was not restricted (why on earth weren't these locked?)
2. The computers' USB ports were not disabled, even though they served no purpose on the kiosk.
3. The kiosks were running an operating system that could somehow be fooled into loading arbitrary software from a USB key
4. The kiosks were connected to the corporate network WITHOUT A FIREWALL

And of course that partial list leaves off other burning questions, like how store employees didn't notice somebody messing around with the kiosk's innards right inside the store?

Yet, as bad as each of these problems is, they were all avoidable.

For #1, a simple padlock (key or combination) would have done fine. Padlock holes are standard issue on lots of computer cases, and most kiosks come with locking doors.

As for #2, disabling unused USB ports can often be done from the BIOS (which itself can be password protected), but if that option isn't viable, a little crazy glue works wonders.

While I normally don't flog WireSpring's products in this blog, our FireCast kiosk operating system was designed with #3 in mind. We've gone through VISA's PCI compliance testing and PABP certification process, as should pretty much anybody working inside a retail environment these days.

As for #4... well... I'm just dumbfounded. How anybody can put a device on a network these days that ISN'T behind a firewall is just beyond me. I can only hope that TJX's lesson is being learned by others who will now go and re-examine their current customer-facing applications to make sure they're as locked-down and secure as possible.

Tags: kiosks, self-service, TJX

Does self service = better service?

That's exactly the question that this article at the Washington Post considers. The first half considers the many things that self-service has going for it these days, including better technology, more user-friendly applications, and a shopper base that's already used to surfing the Internet (probably doing some pre-shopping research) and using ATMs. The second half takes a look at some shortcomings, though, including these tidbits:

[Many] retail outlets remain kiosk-free, with consumers preferring to try on clothes and ask sales associates for help. Fast-food executives say they're waiting for better, more flexible technology.

Gap Inc.'s use of consumer kiosks failed because shoppers were being left alone for too long and many preferred talking with sales people, said Praveen Kopalle, a professor in Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business.

"This technology is very useful when customers immediately see where the benefit is, where the convenience is and where it's more personalized," Kopalle said, citing simple tasks such as withdrawing cash or placing a fast-food order.

McDonald's, Burger King, Subway and others are testing kiosks and while technology providers predict widespread adoption by 2010, restaurant executives seem unconvinced.

I thought that last part was especially compelling, since we hear so much industry "analysis" pointing to massive upswings without any real social, technical or business resolution causing it. Going forward, I expect that the successful kiosk applications -- the ones that have really, really big adoption rates -- will be the ones that provide a significant benefit to both deployer and user. Just look at airport kiosks, as the Post article does. The airlines love them because they can complete a check-in transaction (by far the most common type of transaction handled at the airport) for as little as $0.14, whereas checking in with a rep behind the counter will cost the airline about $3. For the customer, the ability to bypass long lines and check in via a 30-second process on a kiosk means easier, less stressful travel. While these kinds of win-win situations are still the exception rather than the rule, there's no doubt that other self-service applications that fit this model will drive the next wave of kiosk adoption.

Tags: kiosks, self-service

Diebold voting machines are vulnerable to virus attacks

Following up on last week's article about university researchers hacking lots of different kinds of voting kiosks comes this news from PC World. Apparently some voting kiosks made by Diebold, (who has already been in hot water for the security (or lack thereof) of their systems) are prone to remote exploits by certain kinds of computer virus. From the article:

Diebold Election Systems Inc. voting machines are not secure enough
to guarantee a trustworthy election, and an attacker with access to a
single machine could disrupt or change the outcome of an election using
viruses, according to a review of Diebold's source code."

The software contains serious design flaws that have led directly to
specific vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to affect
election outcomes," read the University of California at Berkeley
report, commissioned by the California Secretary of State as part of a
two-month "top-to-bottom" review of electronic voting systems certified
for use in California. The assessment of Diebold's source code revealed an attacker needs only limited access to compromise an election.

"An attack could plausibly be accomplished by a single skilled individual
with temporary access to a single voting machine. The damage could be
extensive -- malicious code could spread to every voting machine in
polling places and to county election servers," it said.

The full report indicated four main problem areas for the software, including insufficient means for preventing hackers from installing malware on the machines, inability to guarantee the secrecy of ballots, no way to prevent election workers from tampering with the machines (and the ballots cast on them), and susceptibility to computer virii (which, let's be honest, is going to be a big problem as long as these devices continue to run on a regular MS Windows operating system).

Tags: electronic voting kiosks

Researchers hack nearly every kind of voting kiosk available

Simply attempting to accomplish the goal stated in the title suggests that the researchers in question were hoping for a bit of free press. But given how important the transactions carried out by e-voting kiosks are, I hope they get a lot of it. According to this article from the San Francisco Chronicle, "state-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California's voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems' electronic functions."

Now to be fair, the researchers were given the source code to the devices, as well as instruction manuals and physical access to the hardware itself, which isn't too likely to happen out in the real world. But given that two of the three items in question are a mere Internet leak away, it's reasonable to be a little bit worried about deploying these devices to hundreds of polling locations with minimal physical security come November.

Tags: electronic voting, kiosks

Can burn on demand DVD kiosks save Blockbuster?

That's exactly the question that this article at Seeking Alpha asks about the movie rental giant. After all, we know that the DVD rental kiosk market has picked up considerably from the days when early pioneers like RedBox were testing out the business model. Yet, while some estimates indicate that we'll have over 10,000 of these devices in the US market by the end of 2007, the country's largest video rental retailer has been notably absent from participation. But rather than missing out on an "obvious opportunity," Seeking Alpha suggests that they may instead be passing up this wave of self-service devices in favor of the next generation terminal: a kiosk that would allow patrons to burn limited-time-use DVDs from a catalog of thousands of titles. The article speculates:

To a certain extent, Blockbuster will be interested in using the burn on demand kiosks in order to minimize real estate and cut down on employee costs, but the real benefit of the kiosks will be the new franchising opportunities that will open up to them. As the video store industry has gone into consolidation mode, Blockbuster’s franchisees have had a very difficult time adjusting to the new rental environment. Disagreements over the online program and the end of late fees has even caused one of their first franchise owners to sue Blockbuster for breach of contract. As the market has collapsed, attracting new capital has been difficult and Blockbuster has struggled in replacing this lost revenue.

Hardware and maintenance costs and licensing/security issues loom large as potential sticking points, but I really liked Seeking Alpha's notion that eventually Blockbuster's stores will look more like a Kinkos, with rows of terminals that can quickly produce any movie from a new blockbuster release to older, more obscure titles that don't often see the light of day (thank goodness for Netflix).

I'll say this: DVD rental kiosks make money. That industry as a whole has bucked the trend and once again proved that consumers really put convenience above all else. Fundamentally, burn-on-demand kiosks should play in the same space. However, CD burn-on-demand kiosks haven't fared as well, since it's fast and easy to download music right to a home PC. That's not the case (yet) for movies, but will it be enough to get consumers to embrace them? With a larger catalog of available titles, it would seem like a burn-on-demand kiosk would have more potential opportunities to reach out to increasingly fickle consumer audiences. But at the same time, the added cost and complexity of the devices could drive up rental prices or drive down overall profitability. (If you're new to the kiosk world you might want to take a look at WireSpring's series of pages and articles about kiosks).

Tags: Blockbuster, burn-on-demand, DVD kiosk

New York says e-voting software must be escrowed

In a blow to Microsoft and all electronic voting systems based on their Windows platform, the New York State Assembly recently upheld a bid that will require all voting software -- including the operating system upon which it runs -- be placed in a secured escrow so that it may be examined by experts in the event of a questionable outcome. While makers of the voting software itself (notable Diebold) were vocal about having the clause weakened or removed, Microsoft was even more argumentative, as the source code to the Windows OS is one of its most closely guarded secrets. As Bo Lipari, executive director of New Yorkers for Verified Voting, noted in this ComputerWorld article,

"concerned citizens created a groundswell of support in the legislature to ensure the law remained untouched...

"We won for a change," he said on Friday. He estimated that about 3,000 constituent calls had been placed with the legislature about the issue. "There was a huge outpouring of support and the legislature noticed this. It was a forceful way to remind them to re-affirm their commitment to these strong laws."

New York State Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, a Democrat from the 125th Assembly District, echoed that sentiment. "The voting machine vendors have known for two years what our laws said," Lifton said Thursday. "Now they're saying that those parts of their systems using Microsoft software have to be proprietary? It's just wrong. We're holding firm on our current state law which calls for open source code.

"This is one extremely clear-cut example (to me, at least) of where opening up the source code is absolutely vital. While we can all hem and haw about the relative security and technological merits of opened versus proprietary source code, when it comes to the politics and the law, which both seem to attract trouble and corruption, the right to review every last subroutine and function of a voting machine is something that I'd like to see more states with electronic voting initiatives require.

Given incredibly short and poor history of electronic voting technologies in the US, my gut feeling right now is that relying on the vendors of these products to be open and honest (and knowledgeable about their products) is just asking for trouble.

Tags: electronic voting, voting kiosks, e-voting

Improving self-service kiosks: taking a lesson from our IVR brethren

MyCustomer.com is running a story about self-service of a different kind: interactive voice response (IVR) systems for call centers, those often-dreaded "press 0 from a touch-tone phone) automatons designed to improve efficiency by forcing the user down one of a number of predetermined paths to handle the most common call reasons.

While there are certainly numerous differences between this sort of self-service and the kiosk variety, the article raises some points that are equally applicable to both. Let's have a look at their list:

• Creating meaningful self-service solutions
"Self-service solutions improve satisfaction ratings by providing customers with instant access to information and services." While the article focuses on the combined use of live voice and IVR, we can certainly see how this would extend to in-store self-service solutions. Self-service solution providers can create meaningful transactions by providing a simple, good experience that delivers real value to the customer.

• Speak in a common language
"Your customers don’t always understand your jargon, including the names of products or services created by well-meaning marketing folks. Save the abbreviations, acronyms and nicknames for company memos and speak plainly to your customers." Again, the same is true for retail self-service. Just because your marketing department knows what your buzzwords and acronyms mean, that doesn't mean that your customers will. Given that many still approach interactive kiosks with some degree of intimidation, solution providers should work hard to ensure that the application being provided is intuitive and easy to understand.

• Make it fast and easy
"Don’t bombard your novice customers with too many options – you’ll just confuse them. Also, consider both novice and experienced users. This means you should enable 'barge-in' capabilities and give your 'power users' options for bypassing directions and prompts they don’t need." Again we can see a direct correlation with IVR and kiosk systems here. A good kiosk application should be optimized for the one or two key functions that will get used by the most people. The method to complete the function should be fast and easy, with as few touch screen or button-clicks as possible.

• Make it easy for callers to reach an agent
I'd re-write this one as "make it easy to get help." Whether this means using a live audio/video/chat button to get help directly from the device, or placing the kiosks in an area where sales staff can provide assistance if needed, depends on both the application and the environment.

• Treat callers with respect
Treat users with respect. Don't assume that the average user is a moron, but by the same token don't assume they're a computer genius either. Make your interface fast and simple, but not patronizing. Likewise, ensure that your support system -- whether electronic, human, or some combination of both -- understands that using a self-service terminal is a means to an end, and that they should be prepared to respectfully instruct patrons.

• Take errors seriously
"Do not insult callers with 'invalid input' responses. That might make sense to your IT department, but it won’t to your customers." Instead, make error messages clear, concise and easy to understand. Or better yet, make your application so simple that there's virtually no way to get an error message in the first place.

• Extend your branding when choosing your solution’s 'persona'
"A fabulous experience with your ... self-service solution will re-enforce your brand and build customer loyalty. Select [a solution] that will project the image and style of your organization." An unbranded or custom-branded kiosk application sticks out like a sore thumb. Take the extra time to integrate the system with the look-and-feel found elsewhere in the environment, taking cues from the brick-and-mortar location and the customer's web site.

• Personalize the experience wherever possible
Loyalty programs feed off of customers' love for being identified as "special." These programs do this by keeping a history of customer activity, and trying to provide helpful tips based on past purchases and habits. Self-service systems can certainly take advantage of this technique as well, though in general my preference is to opt for simple over customized. Per-customer customizations can potentially raise conversion rates and usage of the system, but they can also complicate the offering quite a bit, so that definitely needs to be taken into consideration during the planning phase.

Tags: self-service, kiosks

Channel M targets kiddie gyms for Hasbro/Playskool kiosks

There's something both alluring and decidedly sneaky about marketing to children out-of-home. Of course, the same could be said for marketing to them in home as well, as anybody who has ever watched even just a half hour of Saturday morning TV will tell you. But outside of the home environment, there other factors that come into play - including the powerful but unpredictable mom-will-do-anything-to-get-the-kid-to-stop-crying - that makes out-of-home marketing to kids quite interesting.

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so, too. According to this article at MediaPost, Channel M is installing interactive kiosks into 350 My Gym children's play centers with the goal of pushing Playskool and Hasbro products like Play-Doh:

Channel M has branded the cubbies and installed kiosks that display Hasbro's Play-Doh and Playskool products.

The agency bills the arrangement as an integrated partnership whose goal is to increase children's hand-eye coordination, dexterity, balance, and agility by joining Play-Doh products with select My Gym classes.

My Gym instructors include product samples for children ages 2 to 5, advancing kids' fine and gross motor, cognitive and sensory development, while playing with Play-Doh. And here you thought it was a toy.

In addition, children ages 3 and up who attend a birthday party at a My Gym Children's Fitness Center receive a booklet showing them how to make My Gym's mascot, Mymo the Monkey, out of Play-Doh. Parents can find a coupon in the booklet good toward Play-Doh's "Make 'n' Display" line of products.

Noting a correlation between Play-Doh use and manual dexterity is interesting, but I'd like to know how much that actually factored into the product/venue selection. I do think that the take-home booklet (undoubtedly filled with more soft marketing) is a great idea, though, since kids typically love those things, and any way of moving more brand messaging into the home (especially when the consumer takes it for themselves) must be viewed in a positive light by the manufacturers.

Tags: Channel M, interactive kiosks, retail marketing

Microsoft's Surface takes a new twist on touchscreen tech

Sorry for the awful alliteration - hadn't noticed it until it was too late :) While Elo and others have offered infra-red (IR) and camera-based touch screens like the CarrolTouch for a while, and IBM has used them in products like the Anyplace Kiosk for a few years now, it took Microsoft to make them exciting and sexy for the mass market. Their new Surface technology combines multiple cameras together on top of a projection screen to create a multi-touch capable surface that takes the computer "desktop" metaphor to a whole new level.

While Microsoft has been pitching the thing as an interactive coffee-table type thing designed for in-home use, the $5-10K price tag ensures that the first few adopters will be a bunch of technophiles with too much spending money, and, more importantly, businesses trying to use the device to advance their own goals.

While most of today's crop of self-service applications are optimized for quick, streamlined user interactions that don't require the use of a multi-touch device (heck, the applications we deploy usually don't even allow for mouse dragging), as users become more tech savvy and applications become more complex, I think there could be applications that could make good use of such a novel interface.

Tags: interactive kiosks, self-service, Surface

MedCafe kiosks trades drinks for eyeballs

Yes, Eyeballs... but not in the "eww, gross" way, in the advertising way (which I suppose is "eww, gross" for some people). As MediaSoon notes,

Japanese vending machine operator Apex and ad agency WillB are introducing vending machines that will give users a free or discounted drink if they are prepared to watch an advertisement that plays on the touch screen that’s also used to order the drinks. Apex is the country’s second largest vending machine operator and the ad funded freebies will include coffee and soft drinks. Ads will appear on the cups, too, with advertisers paying 70 to 80 yen (roughly 30p, 40 Euro cents or 60 US cents) per cup distributed.

Since it takes about 30 seconds to fill a cup with a coffee, espresso, cappuccino or juices, customers simply stand by and watch advertising on the screen instead of thinking about the quasi-convincing head of milk foam generated from a mysterious white powdery substance emitted from the machine, so it seems like a real win-win for advertiser and consumer alike.

MediaSoon notes, though, that too much success can be a good thing: "the drinks cost... 100 Yen. No surprise that the idea went down great. But WillB got a little more success than they bargained for - no less than 30,800 cups were drunk within a week." Of course, if the cost of the drink is subsidized -- and at between 70-80 yen for on-cup advertising and whatever they get per view of the digital media it looks like it should be -- this concept could take off in lots of high traffic areas where eyeballs might be even more valuable than hard currency.

Florida to ditch electronic voting kiosks

Just three months after Florida Governor Charlie Crist suggested that maybe these newfangled e-voting kiosks weren't such a great idea, 15 counties, including the voting-challenged Broward and Miami-Dade, will get rid of their marginally useful electronic voting machines instead of widely tested optical voting machines that are used by most of the rest of the state, as noted by this article in the New York Times. The move will not only silence critics (like myself) who thought that the kiosks were error prone and easy to sabotage, but will also introduce a much-needed paper trail while making the overall voting process much more simple. The article notes:

The move is the nation’s biggest repudiation of touch-screen voting, which was embraced after the 2000 recount as a way to restore confidence that every vote would count. But the reliability of touch-screen machines has increasingly come under scrutiny, as has the difficulty of doing recounts without a paper trail.

“This legislation will preserve the integrity of Florida’s elections and protect every Floridian’s right to have his or her vote counted,” Gov. Charlie Crist said in a statement. “Florida voters will be able to have more confidence in the voting process and the reliability of Florida’s elections.”

With optical scanning, voters mark paper ballots that are counted by scanning machines, leaving a paper trail that remains available for recounts.

The 15 counties that will move to the optical scanning, which is in place in the state’s other 52 counties, account for about 51 percent of the state’s 10.4 million registered voters. They include Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Hillsborough Counties.

The plan, part of a bill that moves the state’s presidential primary to Jan. 29, was announced by Governor Crist in February. The Florida Senate voted for it last week, and the House of Representatives approved it unanimously on Thursday.

Honestly, people down here had a hard time punching a hole in a piece of paper, and the government's solution was to make them use a computer. I never understood how they came to that conclusion in the first place, but I'm certainly glad that they've decided to revert to a much more straightforward and highly-tested methodology.

e-voting, voting kiosks, electronic voting machines, florida