There are a number of different reasons why kiosks have become one of the technological success stories of the past decade. One is undoubtedly their versatility. They have proven to be adept at adapting new use cases time and time again. Another is the fact that they can support multiple uses at once. Kiosks are [...]
In our last post, we started to explore the diversity in kiosk use cases across retail. Under the umbrella term ‘unattended retail’, kiosk technology has become a driving force in retail innovation, delivering choice and convenience to shoppers through self-service, and helping retail businesses find flexible new ways to sell while cutting costs. In our [...]
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 [...]
