Article

Kiosks add "license to drive" to LEGOLAND ride

Creative kiosk-solution providers deliver a fun take-home memory for theme park.

October 19, 2010

By: Caroline Cooper, contributing writer

The challenge: build on a successful theme-park attraction that gives the preteen set a chance to drive in a safe and fun style.

The answer: a kiosk solution that creates a mock driver's license for the kids that they can take home and show off. (And hopefully not use on real streets.)

In March 2010, LEGOLAND California reached out to interactive media provider INTOUCH Interactive to create a kiosk solution based on one of the theme park's popular rides.

The ride simulates driving on real streets, and, according to Joe Bushey, president and CEO of INTOUCH, LEGOLAND wanted to create a kiosk that would extend the experience of the ride by creating a mock driver's license for children. The kiosk had to prompt and assist child users in entering their names, having their photo taken and customizing a background design.

One of four worldwide, the LEGOLAND California family theme park in Carlsbad, Calif., features interactive attractions, rides, shows, restaurants and shopping for children and families. The 128-acre park near San Diego is targeted to families with children 2 to 12. Its Volvo Driving School offers a real-life driving experience. LEGOLAND is owned by Merlin Entertainments Group, the parent of Madame Tussauds, and several European theme parks.

The venue needed an interactive kiosk that would be child-friendly, attractive, fun and intuitive. But Bushey says LEGOLAND's needs extended further.

"Some areas of concern were how to avoid bottlenecks at the kiosk, avoiding reprints or wasted supplies, reducing customer service-related issues and having a process that supported other retail purchases," he said.

Atlanta-based INTOUCH works with retail clients to develop engaging customer experiences through self-service kiosks and digital signage. It has created kiosk-based solutions for museum exhibits, site wayfinding, product displays, donor walls and tributes, and other applications.

For LEGOLAND, Bushey says INTOUCH proposed a kiosk station that encompassed all the user functions — entering personal information, taking a photo and customizing the mock license — and a separate pick-up station at the retail counter, where a staff member would retrieve and print the license at the point of purchase and process it, along with any other products the customer might buy. The license kiosk would print a receipt with a barcode that staff could process quickly and easily using LEGOLAND's existing point-of-sale system.

But to customize the kiosk for its unique client and application, INTOUCH needed a software package that would allow a certain level of control and customization.

It turned to Miami-based PROVISO LLC, a firm that specializes in software development for interactive kiosks. The company's turnkey SiteKiosk platform is deployed in kiosks nationwide, including in retail and financial services environments, among others. PROVISIO has a second office in Muenster, Germany.

PROVISIO's SiteKiosk allowed INTOUCH to control the kiosk's camera hardware within a custom interface and to provide real-time feedback to the user.

"SiteKiosk allowed INTOUCH Interactive to present a rich content interface, handle user input and display custom responses from the kiosk," Bushey said. "Automatic handling of such items as attract screens and session timeouts were all native to SiteKiosk, and it provided simple access to the specialty printers required for the application. SiteKiosk effectively locked down the machines and has proven to be stable and reliable."

LEGOLAND California now features four of the mock driver's license kiosks, and INTOUCH will probably be using PROVISIO's platform in the future, according to Bushey.

"The beauty in SiteKiosk is in their object model. It exposes a wide range of tools that normally wouldn't be feasible in a browser-based application," he said. "It's very thoroughly documented and a wide range of functional examples are provided. The SiteKiosk framework has proven simple and effective enough for every solution, from entry-level information kiosks to enterprise-level, transactional kiosks."