InfoKiosk: An Information Kiosk With Text-Free User Interface

Abstract

Even though computer usage may seem very intuitive to almost everyone, they have minimum usability requirements that the user's ability to read is in the language being used. In developing countries such as India, where the adult literacy rate is 66%, this basic requirement for computer usage is its major hindrance. Some other hindrances to accessing modern technology are socio-economic inequality and cultural diversity. InfoKiosk is an end-user application as a step towards providing a text-free user interface (UI) using an existing architectural framework. InfoKiosk UI is designed using features such as action images to represent types of information, mouse-over audio for navigation help, and universal help videos throughout every screen of the application. User inputs and outputs to InfoKiosk are kept intuitive and easy to understand. Two kinds of possible user inputs are - audio and mouse click. In response, the user will receive streaming audio and/or video from YouTube or the InforKiosk server. The design and development of InfoKiosk involve working with technologies such as Java Sound API and, Lumenvox text-to-speech translator.