Interactive Kiosk for College of Engineering

The goal of this project is to create an interactive, touchscreen kiosk in Janssen Engineering Building (JEB) for the College of Engineering. It will serve as a portal to all of engineering and the primary information center for JEB, with information on services available in the building, upcoming events, and maps to aid students and visitors navigate the building.

Background
Janssen Engineering Building has many teacher & faculty offices, departmental offices, classrooms and more. However, it can be difficult to locate various rooms or even know who to ask for directions. JEB lacks a central location where people can come to get information on what is within the building and how to get around - this project aims to remedy this issue.

Several other buildings on campus currently have a touchscreen information kiosk that serve similar purposes, specifically College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) and the Menard Law Building. Both of these installations use a complete development and display kit contracted through [//www.fourwindsinteractive.com/ Four Winds Interactive]. We will also be making use of the same company. Using their software will allow us to have fine grained control over the display contents, while still being able to rapidly develop new features.

Deliverables
Our goal is to have a fully operational interactive kiosk with relevant, helpful information by the conclusion of the project. There will be touchscreen monitor mounted to the wall at the south entrance of JEB, powered by a small computer attached to it.

Content

 * Staff Directory for the building
 * Other Office's Locations
 * Hours for certain areas
 * CSAC, ThinkTank, Labs, etc
 * Background information on the building and the College of Engineering
 * Events

Features

 * Mapping functionality to visually display routes to various locations within the building
 * Secure and robust design, ensuring it can't be tinkered with

Stakeholders
First and foremost, the primary stakeholder would be Rob Patton, as he is our client. Rob will be one of the primary sources of direction and content inspiration for this project. Two of our team members, Robin and Feng, were part of the team working on the spiritual predecessor to this project, Touchscreen Kiosk, last semester. Although it didn't pan out, they gained a lot of insight into expectations and the system that was in place and have already been a great benefit to the team.

In the larger scope, though, the vast majority of the College of Engineering, especially those in JEB, would have at least some small interest in this project. This interactive kiosk has the potential to benefit everyone who steps foot in the building, so many people would have opinions on what they'd like to see as part of this.

Experts
With there being two instances of similar informational kiosks from Four Winds Interactive on campus, luckily we have an expert not far from us. Brad Neal was responsible for choosing Four Winds Interactive and was in charge of the pilot program that is in the Law building. We have already met with him and he offered us a lot of insight, and will be a great asset as we dive into the development side of the project.

The Product
In CALS and the Law building, there were kiosks using the Four Winds Interactive technology already. As soon as we knew that we would be using their services for this project, we visited the two kiosks to get an initial feel of what they were going to be like.

The Technology
Technology will be relatively simple in this project. FWI provides both the touchscreen where users interact with the display, and the computer that runs powers the display. We may use a University computer rather than one provided by FWI, in which case it would still be a relatively simple set up.

Document Archive
As the project progresses, external documentation will be linked here as it is generated.


 * Initial Client Meeting Notes
 * Tentative Schedule