Tell me everything you know in 10 minutes or less

Tell me everything you know in 10 minutes or less
Tags: Components, Hardware, Kiosk Design
October 24, 2010

The other day I was given the pleasure of speaking on a Webinar entitled Kiosk design. The idea of the Webinar was to give people advice on kiosk design and the potential pitfalls involved with “bad” design. I was only given 10 minutes in which to “spill my guts” on everything I know and wrap it up into a nice PowerPoint package. As anyone could imagine wrapping up your job in a 10 minute speech is almost impossible.

What I set out to do was simple – 1. Describe what a customer should bring to the table to get started when seeking a kiosk design; and 2. Describe what the kiosk designer should be doing to help meet that goal. Simple right?

It wasn’t easy trying to put that concept into a short presentation that could be understood by everyone from seasoned pros to people just getting started with kiosks.

In case you don’t know Olea, we are a kiosk manufacturer based in Los Angeles that offers mid- to high- end kiosks in both custom and off-the-shelf designs. We’ve done products for Nike, IBM, Dell, Hot Topic, and Kroger to name a few.

Maintaining a balance of aesthetics and function is a delicate practice. If you’ve ever visited Olea you know that I put the designers and engineers all in one room and essentially force them to coexist. It’s no secret that designers and engineers don’t understand each other’s needs. Believe me I’ve been in the middle of plenty of internal conflicts over the most mundane details of a kiosk. We’re talking details as simple as which direction a piece of metal is folded. Or the funniest one is watching one of my designers trying to convince the engineers that 6-foot kiosk with a base the size of a baseball bat can stand on its own without supports.

So of course just having two groups in one room doesn’t guarantee success. I employ a staff of very talented designers and engineers who are not only good at what they do but they care about design. That common ground is what allows the “magic” to take place.

By “magic”, I mean that zone where cost, form, and function harmonize together. Every project we encounter has that zone; it’s just that it’s harder to find in some projects than others. Often times we hang 20 or 30 hand-drawn concepts on a wall and critique them for days prior to whittling it down to three that we show the client. Besides the designers and engineers my hardware and service experts get a chance to weigh in on those concepts as well. Often times I wish that process were faster but it’s the care and attention to detail that ultimately produces successful designs.

Often we get calls and the first words out of someone’s mouth are about our designs being so nice. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very flattering but it’s not Olea doing all of the work. My customers deserve a huge amount of credit for the designs we produce. After all if they didn’t agree to buy them we would never build them. Our best designs come from great collaborations with our clients.

Cost is always a major part of the design discussion with clients. Sheet metal is usually a fundamental part of the kiosk, so a good rule of thumb when it comes to cost is that curves cost money and straight lines don’t. For example a flat door can be made by a Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machine with very little human intervention. A curved door in contrast is made up of multiple parts and requires a welder to weld them together and grind them smooth. That labor is costly because it requires a trained craftsman; whereas the CNC machine is cheaper because there is little to no skill in pressing a button. If you put that into real world production scenarios you could stamp and form hundreds of doors per day on CNC machines while it would require an army of men to weld as many curved doors in the same time.

That’s why Ferraris cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. In short, there are tasks that only a human can do, and a Ferrari requires tons of them.

Kiosks can be like cars where everyone would love to have a Ferrari or Porsche, but we all have different needs. That’s why SUV’s and mini-vans exist. Kiosks too come in all shapes and sizes. But there is no reason why you shouldn’t have the best looking design possible no matter the function.