Nintendo DSI touch screen kiosk

Using the Nintendo DSI Kiosk

Target is a weekly destination for our family and we always drop a nice chunk of change at the door.  One of the things the boys, and I admit myself, love to do is play the Wii and Playstation 3 demos.  Nintendo upped the game, no pun intended, with a cool touch screen that lets you browse DS releases.  I recorded myself using the touch screen, granted in a horizontal angle.  It was cool to use it and I wonder if more stores and products can use this type of feature.

A couple notes on the interaction

First of all, for little kids, some of the features are completely out of range.  My six year old could not reach the top level games and navigation.  He may not be the main target for this application but kids are convincing and if they can show a parent something cool, well your almost there to a sale.

Second, the buttons and drop downs were very “touchy” and had to be hit in the exact spot.  Several times I wanted to advance a page and I kept clicking a button edge instead of the actual number.  End of the world, well no, but someone may give up and not stumble on a potential game that they would purchase.

Where else can we use a giant touch screen?

Kicking around a few ideas, it becomes apparent that this could be fun to see in other situations.  Some of these ideas are probably already floating around, either in a digital format or even a book or flyer.  Hell, touchscreens are used to order food in Sheetz gas stations so this isn’t revolutionary.  And yes, I admit to ordering gas station food.  Anyway, throw in a little digital magic, some insight to consumer needs and we might have a new way of sharing information and ideas for products that were not so obvious to customers before.

One observation I noticed as I was sketching out some of these ideas is that this concept works well with products that you can’t see every detail or pull off of a shelf.  For instance, I’ve listed the book store concept and I don’t think this is as strong as the hardware or grocery store idea.  It’s pretty easy to walk over and grab a book off the shelf and flip through it to see if it’s worth buying. But getting directions on how to build a fence to keep your annoying neighbors at bay, a totally different goal.   That aside, here are a few ideas and a couple rough sketches for a giant touch screen.

Home improvement store a.k.a Hardware store

It would be a nice touch to walk up to say the gardening aisle and be presented with a list of projects that could be filtered on different criteria to fill your already busy weekend with more projects.

Let’s say you want to add a flower garden in your backyard.  Rather than just run through the gardening section guessing what flowers might look good or work in your climate you could instead pull up different photos that list the types of flowers available and where they’re located in the store.  Or better yet, pull up a full guide on installing a flower garden including the tools you need.

Adding a couple electric outlets to your kitchen.  Call an electrician if you don’t know what you’re doing.  Still crazy enough to do it?  Fine, pull up a few step by step guides and the listing of tools and supplies you need.  Ignore the electrician behind you, he just wanted to get your money anyway.

Book store

So simple but could be a blast.  Kids could pull up the latest titles and see what’s selling well, what’s popular with others.   If they like a few books, see where they’re at on the shelf and go grab it and browse through it even more.  As mentioned above, probably not overly innovative, but with a few twists it could make for an interesting way to learn about new books and authors.

Grocery store

Yes, plenty of choices to get recipes online.  But I still would like to see a full listing of recipes in a store that also carries all of the ingredients.  Also, why not provide the usual listing of recipes.  For families on the run that still want to cook meals in their home, list them out.  Vegetarian?  No problem, full line of recipes available.  Also, why not build in the ability to send it to your phone via text or even scanning the recipe barcode right from the screen.  All ingredients and directions at your finger tips.  This could be a new way to get some new ideas for recipes on the fly in a store or even another way to expand people’s pallets.

Again, these are just a few ideas based on a pretty cool experience at a normal Target run.  So over time I’d like to see where we’ll see more displays and information via touch screens in everyday settings that go beyond your typical electronics or video game display.

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