Article

Kiosks, colleges, and awards

A project between Arizona State University and kiosk provider nanonation led to satisfied students and an industry award for nanonation.

June 12, 2002

(Editor's note: In March, the inaugural Interactive Kiosk Excellence Awards were handed out at the Rosen Center in Orlando, Fla. The awards, sponsored by KioskCom, honored kiosk excellence in six different categories, including software, enclosure designs, and applications. Running twice monthly from May through July, KIOSKmarketplace will profile the winners in each category.)

Most parents with kids in college hear it at least once: "Hi Mom and Dad. I miss you. Can you send me some money?" By making it easier to send that heartfelt message home, one Nebraska company earned an Interactive Kiosk Excellence Award.

nanonation nabbed the award for Best Public Communication Kiosk at the awards ceremony on March 5 in Orlando, Fla., for its set of six kiosks deployed at Arizona State University's Tempe campus. The kiosks serve both as informational portals and e-mail stations for the campus' 25,000 students.

For Bradley Walker, nanonation president and chief executive officer, the award was great recognition for a company that is still in its infancy.

"We really had not had a real placement in the national kiosk circuit if you will, so it was a great honor," Walker said. "We think it was a great project to work with and they were certainly great clients and yeah, it was a lot of fun to do."

Based in Lincoln, Neb., nanonation began operations two years ago, introducing what Walker called its "media driven client server architecture," or the nanopoint. According to a case study written by nanonation, the company's user interface utilizes Apple's QuickTime media architecture that allows the media files, or interactive modules, to communicate "seamlessly" with each other.

"What it seeks to do is really take the best of both worlds in kiosk technology," Walker said. "So you get the very rich media power of a director-based, static type of kiosk implementation versus the web-enabled browser-based type of solutions which have a lot of dynamic content but sometimes misses the multi-media stuff."

Getting to know you

nanonation is courting customers in six markets: retail, entertainment, hospitality, travel and tourism, healthcare, and higher education. nanonation and ASU officials first met at the 2001 National Restaurant Association meeting.

"They actually found us," Walker said. "They were trying to create a destination attraction in their student union as part of their mission to provide more student services on campus and really drive traffic back to the student services area on campus."

Becky Sojak, the communications coordinator for student development at ASU's Memorial Union, said a space came up in the student union last June. After a brainstorming session, it was decided that the space, formerly a music store, would work great as a "cyber-hangout." When students returned to campus two months later, they were introduced to The Plug-In.

"It's an idea for students to come in and plug in with what's going on in the world and their surroundings," Sojak said. "So students can get in touch with the latest in music. They get in touch with what's going on in the world through the web or through communications with friends and family and then what's going on in the world through tangible information like the periodicals that are there."

The nanonation kiosks, which also feature campus information, are the room's centerpiece along with stacks of periodicals and two music listening stations.

"That was the good thing about nanonation," Sojak said. "They customized the settings so it's ASU specific. So the employment goes to the student financial aid website which lists all of our student employment opportunities. The sports connects to our ASU athletic department. It's a great service. They're very flexible to meet our needs as well."

Students can also utilize the digital video camera attached to each station, providing them the opportunity to send home video e-mails.

"(This) allows students the chance to keep in touch with whomever they needed to when they're in our building," Sojak said. "If they're away from home, away from their living space, this is the opportunity for them to stay in touch through emails, through just surfing the web, whatever they need to do."

Meeting the demands

The project has provided several interesting challenges to nanonation. It had to design a rugged unit able to accept non-stop traffic. Each unit has a 15-inch flat panel display, a hardened keyboard and a center-positioned trackball all in a metal countertop enclosure. But it's what is inside the unit that has provided nanonation the unique challenge.

"How do you satisfy the ever changing demands of the digital demographic?" Walker asked. "Young kids can be fairly fickle and we're always constantly looking for different kind of content and applications to put in front of them."

Walker also cited the budgetary demands facing the nation's higher education system. But nanonation and ASU were able to work around those limitations, even enabling the university to provide use of the kiosks free of charge to its students.

"As a higher education system, we're discouraged from having things like banners and other third party participants on our websites which are primarily what kiosks provide as a service," Sojak said. "It cuts down on costs to have banner and advertise but they (nanonation) worked with us to eliminate that factor from the kiosks itself. So now we have banners that support ASU and other activities that are going on campus.

"We could have lowered the costs by having a fee attached to it," she added, "but we really wanted to make this a service to anybody that came into the building."

Sojak said each kiosk cost ASU about $3,000 each. Walker said the entire project was "in the $25,000 to $30,000" range. Included in the arrangement is an ongoing service and support agreement where nanonation can update the kiosks from its Lincoln offices at the request of ASU.

"They have been just a tremendous company to work with," Sojak said. "They are very service oriented. They understand the needs that are going on right now in this industry and the college arena is a great place to tap into."

Prospector's gold

According to nanonation's case study of the project, the six kiosks initiate more than 4,300 sessions a month during the school year, totaling more than 75,000 minutes of usage.

"It's been excellent," Walker said. "We have been thrilled with it and I think the campus has as well. We do receive some student comments from users. They pretty much enjoy the system."

Sojak said continued student impact will gauge where the program goes from here.

"Right now, we're pretty happy with the way things are," she said. "It's in its infancy. We look forward to hearing from our students, seeing what other needs they may have regarding a space such as this. We're always looking for other ideas to meeting our needs of our students."

For nanonation, the future looks bright. The company has just reached an agreement with Rutgers University for a similar project. Walker said they are also finalizing a deployment to 30 campuses through a partner company, CampusLink.

"They have a model that they have already deployed out to a number of different campuses around the country that provides a very similar type of student attraction targeted at the student unions," he said. "We'll be providing the software engine for the current base and the future installation."

It is those prospects in the higher education sector as well as other sectors that lead nanonation to believe it may have forged its niche in the kiosk industry.

"We've actually found a lot of activity in the educational market," Walker said. "We really enjoy working in that space."