Technologies for Growth.

Increased reliability and lower costs pave the road to deployment.

Any self-service deployment is only as good as the sum total of its parts. As in previous years, we asked our respondents to rate the relative importance of the technologies that make up their kiosk projects. Touch screens remain top, with 76% of respondents ranking them as either Extremely or Somewhat Important, followed by Internet connection, with 67% selecting those two options. Printers and credit card readers each drew 60% of respondents to select them as either Extremely or Somewhat Important. These four technologies - touch screens, Internet connectivity, printers and card readers constitute the key components of most kiosk solutions.

Radio Frequency Identification Technologies still in the early adoption phase, like smart card readers and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), got higher numbers at the Not too Important/Not at all Important end of the scale. However, VAR respondent Dean B. Terriah predicts: The marriage of RFID with top-of-the-line and state-of-the-art kiosks will be the biggest marked advantage to have emerged in the last while. It will reduce labor costs, increase competitiveness, boost sales and offer advantages unheard of until recently. Self-service will take a huge jump forward in the speed and quantity of data that can be provided while keeping a handle on and maintaining the labor costs that were once associated with providing similar manual services. Retailers are currently using a variety of approaches to control shrink at self-checkout stations, including weight sensors and video monitoring. But RFID, when it gets to the item level, could change the entire landscape of self-checkout. Shoppers could go through portals that read every item in the cart automatically even those items stuffed into shoplifters' pockets.

Biometrics is also waiting in the wings for increased deployment in self-service applications like security, identification and payment. As with RFID, costs still need to come down significantly to achieve wider adoption of the technology. Established applications include hand print readers for probationers to check themselves in, and some school cafeterias and libraries are using thumb/fingerprint identification for payment or checking out books. Airports are also piloting biometric identification to speed pre-registered frequent travelers through security checkpoints. As shown on the chart, Thumb/finger/handprint recognition has the most traction, with 14% of our respondents using it in their kiosk solutions, followed by the historically well-established signature recognition with 12%. Still, 78% of our respondents report using no biometrics at all.

The general public has been shown to be most comfortable with signature and Thumb/finger/handprint recognition, the latter despite the criminal associations of fingerprinting. Facial and iris (eye) recognition are perceived as being more obtrusive and invasive of privacy. Voice recognition has yet to come into its own, but shows great promise for long distance transactions conducted via telephone or computer connections. When asked which biometric applications they believe would be useful for their kiosks, 43% of our respondents selected Thumb/finger/handprint recognition, followed by 41% for signature recognition. Voice recognition got 14% of responses, facial recognition got 11% and iris recognition got just 9%. None was still selected by 11% of our respondents.

Internet connectivity has become vital for self-service deployments, facilitating content updates, remote management, communications, transactions and many other key applications. The largest percentage of our respondents 29% use LAN (T1, T3) connections, followed by DSL with 26%. WLAN (wireless WiFi) garnered 12% of responses, and satellite just 4%, as these technologies have yet to become fully established for self-service. Interestingly, 4% of our respondents are still using dial-up, and 3% reported having no Internet connections. These numbers will shift in the next few years, as new technologies and applications require high-speed Internet connectivity to function.

Kiosk Failure

Any technology is only as good as it is reliable; in unattended self-service environments, reliability is an absolute prerequisite for success. Users won't come back for a second try if a kiosk doesn't work the first time they use it. As in all of our previous kiosk studies, we asked our respondents for their most frequent causes of kiosk failure. As shown on the chart, gone are the days when kiosks were known as those things that never work. Gone are the blank screens, the unplugged machines and the 'Out of Order' signs that were once so common in the early days of kiosks.

In this year's Study, there were no double-digit percentages for Very Frequently, and just two for Frequently: 11% of our respondents cited Internet failure and 10% cited card reader failure as frequent causes of kiosk failure. Somewhat Frequently, the neutral option among the five choices, drew more responses, but still nothing above 19%. Somewhat frequent causes include Internet failure, printer failure, card reader failure, cash/coin acceptor failure, display failure and a harsh operating environment. This last cause is diminishing as enclosures become more robust, even tolerating outdoor and factory environments.

At the other end of the scale, almost never drew the greatest number of responses, reflecting the overall technology improvements that have paved the way for self-service deployments. Vandalism, once the scourge of unattended self-service devices, is now the least frequent cause of failure, with 55% of our respondents reporting that it almost never happens. Other robust elements that almost never fail include scanners, keyboards and cash/coin acceptors.