Kiosks Cont.

After doing some research on kiosks, I thought I would have a closer look at some of the kiosks in Nottingham city centre. After a discussion in our tutorial with Roma, I wanted to take a closer look at the kiosk for the tourism centre. It wasn't a kiosk as such, it was more of a touchscreen, that you could interact with from outside the tourism centre, by touching the glass.

I actually found the touchscreen rather difficult to use, and sometimes frustrating. The cursor wasn't that sensitive to your touch, and would sometimes select an option that you may not have chosen. This can become annoying for planning journeys, as you have to be specific with your destinations, and because the cursor was difficult to control, this can also be time consuming.

Another example was a kiosk in the Broadmarsh Centre, which provided information for all of the stores in the centre, and also included maps and directions. This will be helpful to those who are not familiar with Broadmarsh, or for those who are searching for a particular shop. Other kiosks i spotted were the order processing kiosks in Argos, and the checkout kiosks in Tesco. These kiosks are certainly helpful when there are long queues elsewhere.

Interactive Display - iBar

I first came across the iBar on BBC World’s program called >Click, which talks about the latest developments in the world of technology. The iBar is a system for the interactive design of any bar-counter. Integrated video-projectors can project any content on the milky bar-surface. The intelligent tracking system of iBar detects all objects touching the surface. This input is used to let the projected content interact dynamically with the movements on the counter. Objects can be illuminated at their position or virtual objects can be ‘touched’ with the fingers. The interactive surface may show corporate logos from certain brands for promotional purposes. Alternatively, the iBar could show more visually stimulating images such as water effects where the person interacting with the surface would leave an impression behind. Other visual images include flowers and butterflies, where the butterflies follow the person’s hand, or even a glass that may be on top of the bar. This concept really fascinated me, and it looks amazing. However there isn’t much information on how the iBar exactly works, for example the use of any sensors it uses. But I will keep checking for any new information.