Touch screens and interactive kiosks in venues

A touch screen lets customers find what they want for themselves, so they don't have to wait for a loop to come round to it: a hotel guest checking what's on this week, say, or a gym member reading about a class before booking it. In Casty any layout can be made interactive, so a tap can move to the next layout, jump to a particular one or move between items within it. You need a display with a touch panel and, for most set-ups, an Android player with touch switched on for that display.

What interactive means in Casty

An interactive layout reacts to a trigger by carrying out an action.

The triggers are a touch or click, a key press on a keyboard attached to the player, or a webhook call (another system calling a web address). The actions are going to the next or previous layout, jumping to a specific layout, or moving between widgets. An action can sit on a whole layout, a single zone or one widget, so a button in the corner can do one thing and the rest of the screen another. A layout can also trigger a command, which is how a tap can make something happen on the hardware side.

In practice, a touch kiosk is a small set of layouts linked by buttons. There's a home screen, a page for each topic, and a way back home from every page.

Where touch earns its place

Touch suits spots where people have a reason to stop and a question the screen can answer.

A hotel lobby is the obvious one. Guests want to know what's on this week, when the restaurant opens and how to find the meeting room, and a touch screen by the lifts can answer all of that at three in the morning when the desk is quiet. Hotel lobby screens covers the non-touch side of the same space.

In a gym, a touch screen next to the class timetable can hold a page for each class, with what it involves and who it suits, which saves the reception team explaining spin to every new member. In a shop it might be a size guide, or a page per product in a range with photos and prices. In a pub or restaurant, a screen near the door where people can flick through the food menu with photos, or see what events are coming up this month.

It's less useful where people are in a hurry or have their hands full, and anywhere a printed sheet would do the job just as well.

Taking orders or payments isn't something Casty does. That job belongs to your till or ordering system, and a Casty kiosk sticks to showing information.

Interactive without anyone touching the glass

A trigger doesn't have to be a customer's finger. A keyboard plugged into the player counts, so staff can switch a screen to a different layout with a key press, for example putting up the last orders layout on the bar screen. A webhook lets another system change what's on screen by calling a web address. Casty can also run scheduled action events that listen for a webhook code, then switch content or run a command.

These need setting up with us, but they're handy when you want a screen to change without anyone opening the CMS.

The hardware

You need a display with a touch panel, which means either a touch screen built for the job or a touch frame fitted over an existing screen. For touch set-ups the devices page points to a touch display with an Android player, and touch is switched on per display on Android. Check with us before buying, so we can confirm the screen and player will work together.

A few practical things for a kiosk:

• Height and reach. Put the buttons where someone in a wheelchair, or a child, can reach them as easily as someone standing.
• Cleaning. Fingerprints show, so add the screen to the cleaning rota with a cleaner that's safe for screens.
• Wear. A public touch screen gets prodded all day, and displays built for public use are made to take it.
• Power and network at the spot. A kiosk in the middle of a lobby needs both, and a cable run across the floor isn't an option.

A kiosk usually works best upright, in portrait, which suits a page of buttons and a person standing in front of it.

Designing touch layouts people can use

Make it obvious the screen can be touched. A first page that says "Tap to see what's on" does more than any icon.

Make the buttons big and leave space between them. Fingers are much less precise than a mouse pointer, and people tap with whatever's free, sometimes a knuckle. Put a home button on every page, in the same place each time, and keep things shallow, so anything is reachable in two or three taps.

Text can be a bit smaller than on a wall screen, because people stand at arm's length, but it still needs to be readable without leaning in. Designing for screens covers text size and contrast in more detail.

Think about what happens when someone walks off halfway through. A kiosk left on page four of the spa menu looks broken to the next person, so plan with us how the screen gets back to its first page. The Interactive widget in the layout editor is one we ask you to check with us before using, so that conversation happens anyway. The widgets help page lists it with the others.

Keep another way in

Not everyone can use a touch screen, whether that's down to sight, reach or simply not liking them. Keep the same information available somewhere else: from staff, on a printed sheet at the desk, or on your website. Making screen content accessible goes into this properly.

The interactive section of the features page lists the triggers and actions in full.