Hi all - sorry for the slightly OT, but does anyone have an experience with
producing Director presentations for kiosks? Where's the best place to buy
(UK based), any common pitfalls, average costs etc.
The Elo touchscreen monitors are pretty decent. I'd recommend using an LCD rather than a phosphor display, because LCDs don't have the burn-in problems and in my experience run cooler.
Do NOT let anyone sell you a Windows box. Use a Mac for your CPU. It'll be a heck of a lot more reliable. Virtually every problem I've ever had with kiosk installs is in dealing with stupid Windows crashes. (The client wanted Windows, "it's cheaper", bla bla bla, ignoring the real costs of downtime when the systems would fold up for hours on end.)
*Always* make sure your CPU enclosure has superb ventilation. A few holes drilled in the sides do not suffice; you've got to have a couple fans in there to force air around.
As for UI on the kiosk display, remember most users won't have time to learn or memorize the display controls. Make all the choices very simple, have a very large "home" button that essentially resets the display so when one person wanders off the next doesn't have to figure out how to start over again, and always make your buttons obviously buttons. Give them a raised or 3D look. Also keep the choices brief. Don't present the user with 15 buttons on one page. That's too many. Try to keep it less than 5.
Beware of parallax. The screen glass itself is pretty thick, which means that buttons that are relatively short in height might be very hard to hit accurately with a finger. Make 'em tall, ideally more or less square or circular.
Test, test, test. Bring in chuckleheads from off the street who've never seen the display before and pay 'em a few bucks (or quid) to mess around for a while. See where they get lost or where they seem to be unable to understand what's going on with the program. End users will behave in exactly the same fashion with the kiosk. I don't mean "focus group" here -- focus groups rarely yield useful advice (look at the "improvements" made with MS Word over the years if you don't believe that) -- but do pay attention to how they respond and, if you need to rehack the UI based on their failures to comprehend it, do it.
Warren Ockrassa | President, nightwares LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] nightwares LLC | Consulting Programming http://www.nightwares.com/ Developer | Structor, a presentation development/programming tool Info and demo | http://www.nightwares.com/structor/ Author | Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio: A Beginner's Guide Chapter samples | http://www.nightwares.com/director_beginners_guide/
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