The surest sign that a technology has reached full maturity is when it starts to evolve and diversify beyond its original use cases. Or its original design, for that matter. On that basis, kiosks have been a ‘mature’ technology for some time now. They are, after all, used for dozens of different purposes and take [...]
Technology is capable of truly amazing things. But without paying attention to the user interface design (UI), it doesn’t matter how clever or groundbreaking or revolutionary your tech product is. If it’s not simple and straightforward for people to use, even if it feels a bit ‘clunky’ or visually isn’t up to much, people will [...]
Remember the vending machines of old? Coin-operated, and mechanical, it often felt something of a lottery as to whether you’d get the product you wanted. Today’s models look very different. Slick, digital, touchscreen operated - like so many electronic devices, vending machines have gotten ‘smart’. And it’s kiosk technology driving them. In many ways, vending [...]
In an age when everything from phones to TVs to homes is ‘smart’, smart cities stand out as the most ambitious of all such data-fuelled, connected concepts. It’s a simple matter of scale. Something like a smart refrigerator, for example, might use a limited array of sensors to detect when you are running low on [...]
Self-service checkout can nowadays be considered a mature technology, especially in the hyper-accelerated terms of digitisation. One of the original use cases for kiosks, self-checkout is now a familiar point of sale option across retail, hospitality, leisure and entertainment, travel and many more sectors. One of the reasons why self-checkout - and self-service kiosks in [...]
How people interact with business is changing. These days, we’re just as likely to make a purchase online as we are to walk into a shop. If we want information or support, we’ll click on a live chat widget or even post a message on social media just as often as we’ll pick up the [...]
By 2010, the hype around cloud computing in tech circles was already reaching fever pitch. Google CEO Eric Schmidt had coined the term ‘cloud’ four years earlier to talk about the ‘opportunity’ running IT architecture in remote servers presented. Amazon Web Services (AWS) had been around since 2002. But there was a problem. For all [...]
There’s a lot to marvel about modern digital technology. But perhaps the most amazing part of it all is also the part we take most for granted - connectivity. For all the clever things your smartphone can do, and the amount of compute power it packs into a slender hand-sized frame, what would it be [...]
With the COP27 summit in November 2022, the increasingly urgent need to tackle climate change was once again been at the top of the news agenda. But the truth is, for individuals and businesses alike, this is no longer an issue anyone can afford to put on the backburner even when it’s not making headlines. [...]
Even as we transition to a digital society where it seems the whole world is stored in our smartphones, cards continue to play an important role in our day-to-day lives. The majority of people, of course, continue to carry bank and payment cards with them despite the emergence of phone-based digital wallets. Aside from that, [...]
