Article

Wayfinding kiosks keep up with digitally-empowered consumers

Wayfinding kiosks have become more interactive and smartphone-friendly to meet the demands of consumers.

June 18, 2014

Wayfinding software is becoming increasingly interactive to meet the demands of today’s smartphone-savvy consumers, industry experts tell Kiosk Marketplace.

“Five years ago, wayfinding kiosks just had static digital displays that didn’t interface with mobile devices, and maps that weren’t searchable,” said Tim Mancuso, vice president of sales and business development at Marion, Indiana-based kiosk manufacturer Zivelo. “Now we’re seeing a lot more interactivity at wayfinding kiosks and the same capabilities as users have on their PCs and smartphones. They offer Google Maps-style directions, and, as they use facial recognition technology to profile the demographics of passersby, can display targeted advertising. They then provide analytics to advertisers on their users’ demographics.”

“Due to their experience with mapping applications on their smartphone, consumers using wayfinding systems expect multiple levels of detail, pivoting in 3D space, zooming in and out via multi-touch, and getting a route drawn from their current location,” said Jerry Zeephat, solution manager at NCR.

Mancuso said that a successful wayfinding kiosk needs to offer the ability to quickly search for specific results such as ‘shoes’, ‘vegan’, or ‘outpatient.’ “This requires a robust back-end software application capable of amassing keywords and other relevant data associated with the kiosk’s database directory,” he wrote in a blog. “The result of this level of accuracy in delivery is an engaged consumer, an effective kiosk initiative, and additional depth of data for analytical mining and tailoring of content.”

Mobile integration

“Offering consumers a mobile app that offers directions and other information on their mobile device is rapidly becoming standard in the wayfinding kiosk industry,” said Mancuso. “The app tells the shopper when they are getting close to their destination, and it can also deliver coupons to their smartphones from retailers who are en route to the store they’re looking for.”

Comparative market research testing has found that wayfinding kiosk deployments not including mobile device integration result in users having shorter interactions with the terminals, and resorting to snapping photos with their smartphone so they can ‘take the map with them,’ according to Mancuso. “Where mobile integration is provided, the majority of users with a smartphone or tablet, take steps to interact with the kiosk via their mobile device,” he wrote in his blog.

However, NCR found that smartphone users still prefer to use wayfinding kiosks in malls for directions. “We engaged a third-party research firm to study one of our larger wayfinding kiosk deployments,” said Zeephat. “We were surprised to find that 78 percent of customers with a smartphone would rather use the kiosk than their smartphone for navigation, if given the choice.”

Large market

The market for wayfinding kiosk hardware and software is worth around $1 billion a year, according to Mancuso.

“We believe the market’s pretty big,” said Zeephat. “Any building you can potentially get lost in is a potential customer for a digital wayfinding solution, with the greatest opportunity being in buildings with very high foot traffic such airports, malls, stadiums, and convention centers. But, beyond that, there are certainly business cases for resorts, corporate campuses, hotels and large office buildings to deploy wayfinding solutions.”

Zeephat said that large facilities want a simpler way to update the maps on their websites, digital signage and mobile apps. “Today, they have to re-visit each of these endpoints one by one, when they need to update a map” he said. “What our customers want is a single manageable map that they can publish everywhere, without having to get multiple people involved. To be fair, publishing a simple graphic on a website, digital signage or mobile app is fairly easy. But it’s very difficult to make each experience completely optimized and appropriate for its context.”

NCR is seeing demand for multi-touch capability and support for gestures such as swipes at wayfinding kiosks, Zeephat said. “To date, many large-format touchscreen touch technologies just aren’t very accurate, and aren’t well suited to these types of interactions,” he said. “I believe that the vendors in this space are realizing that consumers expect the same types of touchscreen interactions as they get on their smartphones and tablets.”

Elevate Digital

Over the last two years, Chicago-based Elevate Digital has installed over 60 Elevate interactive digital touchscreens in Chicago which invite passersby to interact with connective advertising, view tourist information and find directions to attractions. A partnership with Groupon also allows users to purchase daily deals and real-time offers directly from the screens.

“We’ve found in Chicago that each interaction with an Elevate screen lasts around a minute and a half,” said Elevate's CEO and founder George Burciaga. “Cumulatively, that amounts to 4.5 to five hours of dwell time per day per unit. Our Chicago network generates over 200 million impressions and 2.2 million direct engagements per year.”

Elevate’s business model is to share a portion of the advertising revenue from its digital displays with location partners such as city governments and malls. It outsources the sale of the advertising on its displays to an ad sales partner such as Adspace Networks (http://www.kioskmarketplace.com/news/adspace-partners-with-elevate-for-digital-signage-ad-kiosks-in-malls/) or Titan.

Verticals

Elevate’s largest vertical markets are entertainment, transportation and cities, said Burciaga. “We’ve signed a deal with Cisco to put our technology in the kiosks it is supplying to city governments (http://www.elevatedigital.com/elevate-digital-debuts-interactive-technology-at-iot-world-forum-in-barcelona/),” he said. “Cities which we have signed contracts with Cisco include Rio de Janeiro and Barcelona.”

The technology Elevate has developed for the city government sector offers features such as interactive wayfinding; information on city events, attractions and non-emergency services; connective advertising; integration with mobile devices and social media; and analytic and predictive data.

“Elevate will be bidding with an advertising partner for the contract to supply New York City with a network of public communications hubs to replace its payphone network,” said Burciaga.

In March 2014, Elevate deployed its digital displays at The LINQ, Caesars Entertainment's open-air shopping, dining and entertainment district on the Las Vegas Strip. “We will be potentially expanding across all Caesars Entertainment properties in the U.S.,” said Burciaga.

In June 2014, Elevate said it will be installing digital concierge display solutions in malls belonging to Simon Property Group in 30 U.S. markets by the end of 2014. It also announced a partnership with SFX Entertainment, a producer of live events and digital entertainment content for the electronic music industry, to bring its interactive screen technology to electronic music festivals.

“Our displays include facial recognition technology and a digital camera,” said Burciaga. “If I approach an Elevate display in the Simon Mall in Chicago, it will send a message to my mobile via Bluetooth asking me to touch the screen. The display will take a photo of me and ask where I want to send the photo, for example to my Facebook page. It will also show a message from the Mayor of Chicago telling me what is happening in Chicago and informing me about special deals”

NCR

NCR’s larger wayfinding kiosk implementations include Methodist Hospital in Houston, one of the biggest in the U.S., with wayfinding kiosks throughout its campuses, and Dubai Airport, the busiest international airport in the world, said Zeephat. 

“We’ve seen growth universally among the geographies and verticals which we serve, as interactive wayfinding becomes less of a ‘wow’ feature and more of an ‘expected’ feature of large public facilities,” Zeephat said. “For NCR, one of the more fascinating aspects of the technology isn’t just the currently hot markets, but its potential outside of consumer-facing apps from large monolithic facilities. Have you ever walked into a big-box retailer, looking for just one simple thing, and spent 15 minutes finding it? We think that’s a problem worth solving.”

NCR’s strategy is to provide a rich user experience on both its wayfinding kiosks and its wayfinding mobile apps, and not compromise either experience, according to Zeephat. “We help our customers inform their consumers that both types of wayfinding tools are available,” he said. “NCR can use a variety of different methods to route the wayfinding information to a mobile device: SMS simple text instructions from the kiosk; a QR code or NFC identifier that passes routing data to a connected mobile app; or subliminal audio sent to a mobile app that passes along the route information and displays it on the mobile device.”

Even though support for mobile applications is critical, NCR’s wayfinding kiosk customers don’t want people walking through their facility with their nose buried in a smartphone, Zeephat said. “The best thing we can do is make information clear and memorable, so the consumer can glance at it, and then be free to experience what the location has to offer with their own eyes,” he said.