Citizen Space support for kiosks

In this article we'll be discussing the following:

What kind of kiosk technology does Citizen Space support?

Since 'kiosk' can mean many things these days, from a literal 'kiosk' in a stand-alone unit to a restricted tablet running kiosk software, it is difficult to exhaustively list what kind of kiosks Citizen Space can support. However, we can list the requirements that must be met by any kiosk you wish to run a Citizen Space survey on:

  • Your kiosk must have a web-browser
  • Your kiosk must be connected to the internet
  • Your kiosk must handle inactivity time-outs itself - we provide a reset URL for it to call when it has been inactive for too long
  • Your kiosk must take responsibility for ensuing the respondent can't navigate the browser to another website

My kiosk solution meets all the requirements, what else should I know?

Now that you know that your kiosk solution will be able to run a Citizen Space survey, there are a few things you need to know and be aware of whilst you build your survey. This is especially relevant if you plan to make your survey available on both a kiosk and to normal visitors to your Citizen Space.

  • You should avoid putting any links to external content in the pages of your survey, unless your kiosk solution can handle that neatly
  • You should avoid embedding rich media, such as videos and PDFs into your survey, as these may include links away from the survey, and may not display properly on tablets
  • When running in a kiosk, your survey will bypass the overview page and take the respondent directly to the survey. For this reason you may wish to give the first page of your survey a meaningful title, and possibly include a brief overview of the survey. This may affect the information you wish to include on the overview page to avoid repetition for non-kiosk respondents

I am happy with that, now how do I activate the kiosk support for a survey?

Kiosk support is available for any survey, on a special URL. You need to configure your kiosk to go to that URL to start up the kiosk support. The URL is easy to configure.

Starting from the dashboard of the activity that you wish to use on a kiosk, take the public URL:

Top of activity dashboard with public URL highlighted

Once you have this, you need to add /consultation/@@enter_kiosk to the end of it. In this example, you are starting with the URL:

https://demo.citizenspace.com/waste/analysis-good-survey-design-green-homes

You are then adding /consultation/@@enter_kiosk, giving you the URL:

https://demo.citizenspace.com/waste/analysis-good-survey-design-green-homes/consultation/@@enter_kiosk

By setting your kiosk to start at this URL, it will enter kiosk support, and direct the browser to the first page of the survey (or the table of contents if the survey is non-linear).

I only want my survey to be on the kiosks, I do not want it to be visible to anyone visiting the normal site. Can I do this?

Yes, if you set your activity to be private then it will not show up on your site homepage. However, you can still set up your kiosk with the private URL and it will work fine.

How do I preview my survey on a kiosk?

We recommend that you set the activity to private and publish it, then test it on your kiosk. Once you have done this and are happy with your survey, retract it, delete your test responses and turn off Private (optional). It is then ready for the public!

How do I know which respondents answered on a kiosk, and which respondent through the web in the normal manner?

Standard respondents - those coming through the normal Citizen Space website - have a Respondent ID starting with 'ANON'. If a respondent answered the survey on a kiosk, they will have a Respondent ID starting with 'KISK'.

Why does kiosk support skip the overview page?

When running on a kiosk there are a few things that it is important to do. First and foremost of these is that the respondent should not be able to navigate to any other page on the internet, nor should they be able to open email clients on the kiosk or anything like that. Since the overview page often includes links to related activities, documents, and websites as well as email addresses, we skip it when running on a kiosk.