An interesting project request came to me today — we need to build an interactive booth. Just one (a “show piece” if you will) for the time being. Now, much as I did a lot of design for these types of systems back when I was studying HCI, I haven’t ever actually built one.
So, friends and colleagues out there in the blogosphere, I need your help! Any ideas on good software, operating system, technical config and so on for interactive booths?
Notes: I’m willing to consider anything, but of course open source is always a winner. The ability to design kickass user interaction is a must, but I’m not particularly beholden to touchscreen vs mouse-driven, for instance. Any ideas, please share in the comments, whether it’s something to go for or something to shy away from!
Comments (4) Permalink
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:16 PM
Can you give us more of an idea of what the booth is supposed to do?
Assuming it’s supposed to serve information (like the iPoints that used to be in Bath?), I’d have thought a touch screen would be a must, as that’s what people would expect. And less to break/be stolen, and easier to clean. Or you could go with the novelty approach and use a Wii controller…
The first thing that springs to mind is Firefox in kiosk mode. I did the HCI conference 2003 information screen using that, with HTML and AJAX – it was display only, but I can’t see why the idea couldn’t be extended to respond to user input.
Flash (running in Firefox in kiosk mode) may be a better fit though. I’ve spent a lot of time working in it over the past two or three years; it would give you greater control over the interface – it’s vector-based so is resolution independent, no flash of white between pages, better mouse controls etc, but could still interface with a database back-end if necessary. It’s also good at animating, in case you want it to be a bit flashier (no pun intended *).
Is that an appropriate answer, or have I completely misunderstood the question? 🙂
(* blatant lie)
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:47 AM
On a related note, I can’t resist plugging Opera’s Kiosk mode: http://www.opera.com/support/mastering/kiosk/
I’ve never needed to use it myself, though.
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:24 AM
Thanks for the ideas guys 🙂
I am leaning towards Flash. The main point of the booth will be to share information, but it does need to be as “slick” as possible. Animation and video inclusion would be good too.
@Richard: Since I’ve never built ANYTHING in Flash before, any recommendations for tools/books?
March 23rd, 2007 at 12:02 PM
There are some pretty good tutorials that ship with Flash, that should explain how everything works.
ActionScript isn’t too hard – it’s basically JavaScript with some classes to control the Flash. But if you’re writing lots of AS, I would do it in .as files with an external editor and include them – lot easier to maintain.
I did find Mike Chambers’ “Flash Resource Manager” invaluable when working like this, but his website seems to be down, so not sure if you can get it any more.