More than the Box

Why? Recent research has shown that the leading kiosk development issues for providers are: pricing, software, connectivity and time-to-market. These issues are aligned with and reflect the underlying requirements of our customers, and probably most of you who are reading this now. We believe the reliability and performance of hardware has for many years exceeded that of the software configuration, systems and user interfaces that depend on this hardware. Unfortunately the exponential growth in hardware performance has not translated into similar software performance levels.

We also believe the reliability and availability of kiosk hardware has for many years exceeded that of the networking infrastructure connecting the hardware to wider network. So, hardware performance can ultimately depend on the software and the network, and there is a symbiotic link between all three.

In an increasingly networked world, with many sources of data, the responsiveness and reliability of kiosk user interfaces has to exceed that of all competing hand-held touch screen devices. We believe those without access to or the ability to access these small devices are the most in need of a user interface and experience that is fast, interesting, relevant and easy. And for those who are packing the latest iPhone then we believe we should be building more bridges between the device and kiosk, and all available channels, setting information free.

In summary we offer more than the box simply because after 20 years we’re pretty good at making the box. However there is now a pressing need to tackle the familiar kiosk project issues, and misconceptions, for our customers and kiosk users:

- a poor return on the investment due to capital and ongoing costs not matched to the business case;

- software not working as it should leading to frustrated users and staff, and

- other elements not working as they should such as the network or 3rd party data feeds.

How?

At Neo we continually strive to be the leading Kiosk Systems Integrator by creating customer focussed products and services. As a single specialist integration provider, coupled with a global in-house manufacturing facility, we are well placed to deliver kiosk projects and effective larger roll-outs in a cost effective way and fast time-to-market.

Build a platform, use the best tools and become more responsive

By designing simple software that does the bare minimum to enable interoperability we create more innovative services and software solutions for our hardware, or in fact any hardware provider. These products have been designed as a platform and kiosk ’app infrastructure’ on to which more end-user facing products can be built. We have also built network applications that move data to and from kiosks in an asynchronous way and also services that move data between files and SQL database systems. These platform products are designed to be agnostic to the hardware and peripherals, data format, GUI technology and communications protocol. The platform also includes re-usable GUI components that have been optimised for many collaborating users and multi-touch gesture based applications.

The platform together with a focus on responsiveness and agile teams, engineering best practice and user-centred design translate into time savings, effective delivery, high-quality results and a greater ability to change. This is especially important when conducting kiosk trial projects or prototyping new concepts.

We discovered there were no open, modern and extensible libraries or development environments tailored for the development of kiosk software and user interfaces. Those that do exist tend to be closed or limited to programming models or proprietary scripting that are not powerful enough to create cutting edge user interfaces or to link to standard 3rd party libraries or services. These environments were usually designed for a specific application type, such as Internet cafe browsers or digital signage, and then extended to try and meet the needs of more general application development.

We believe GUIs should be carefully hand crafted and built using tools that strike the right balance between expressiveness, ease of use to the developer and interoperability with other tools. It is the other tools for compiling, testing, deploying and configuring that we automate so that we can spend more of our time on new feature requests, ensuring applications are properly debugged prior to deployment and supporting customers.

This approach allows us to add value through design, engineering and the knowledge of how to select, integrate and support the best possible hardware, software and distributed components.

What?

Okay, now you have a general idea of why we are interested in more than the box and how we changed the company to support this new direction it’s time to provide some specific facts and examples to backup these beliefs and to also introduce some of the applications, utilities and services we are now providing, and finally some of the active areas of research and development for the kiosks of the future.

In 2008, Neo delivered application software, content acquisition software, an operating platform, hardware and remote managed services to its first integration customer in the UK.

In 2009, Neo followed up with e-wrap delivering this innovative solution to Australian retailers, again integrating all the elements in house and accepting responsibility for the complete solution and operation support.

In 2010, we have been working on packages, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and utilities that are all about helping our goal to provide the best kiosk systems integration experience.

The .Net API we have developed is called the Neo Kiosk Framework and this has a corresponding JavaScript API called WebLink. These APIs provide Neo’s kiosk operating platform that sits just above the OS and just below end-user applications. The APIs provide higher level functions to support kiosk hardware peripherals, modern touch based user interface controls, encryption, inter-kiosk and server communications, file transfer, content acquisition, device management, sales order processing and payment services.

I hope that this has given you an insight into our thought processes and current areas of activity. Please contact us for more information on how to license this software and our kiosk management services.