Art had some concerns about the look-and-feel of the proposed kioks and how they would (or wouldn’t) fit into the overal design of the new campus. Clark came up with three or four initial ideas and we passed them by our Director of Operations, Art Kuiper, who was also acting as Project Manager for our new Mid Rivers campus.We approached TechArts staffer and former cabinet-maker Clark Wllbanks about brainstorming some designs based on our basic needs of the kiosks holding an iPad2 and label printer, with associated power supplies/cables/etc well hidden.So here they are (see pics), our brand-new new ArenaChMS mobile kiosks, built in a style I’m calling “Industrial Chic” ? The process from initial idea to completion was a total team effort and went roughly like this:
That’s when we decided we were going to have to create our own… Everything we found was either immobile, not able to hold an iPad AND printer, way too expensive, or way too “sleek/metal/whatever.”. So, we set about looking for a cool mobile kiosk that would host an iPad2 and label printer, but could find nothing suitable for purchase. We’ve seen some really cool permanently-mounted kiosk setups at other churches (usually focused in the childrens area), but that just doesn’t work for our way of doing ministry.
We host various classes/events each “semester” for adults at all campuses, and they will be using this system to check-in to these classes/events and print their own tags… thus the need to move the kiosks to the parts of the facility where they make sense for the specific class/event. Why this requirement? Because for us, this isn’t just a “child check-in system” but a church-wide one. We also knew that the kiosks needed to be mobile… that is, easily moveable to various parts of the facility at any time.
We started brainstorming and changing bits of code to make it match our way of doing check-in earlier this summer, and knew from the start we wanted the kiosks to be iPad-based, primarily because a single iPad is about half the price of an Elo touchPC, which was our prior standard for our existing check-in system (yes, we know there are cheaper touchPC alternatives, but none of those options really fit our needs… and besides that, since we were implementing a web-based system we didn’t need full blown Windows machines at the kiosks, regardless.) We also briefly evaluated using cheaper Android-based tablets for this, but in the end decided that the ecosystem surrouding the iPads is far more pervasive and readily available (for example, where are you going to find a lockable enclosure for x-brand Android tablet?) Not only is this our newest campus, but it’s the first campus where we’ve decided to implement the CCCEV/HDC ArenaChMS check-in modules. Novemmarked the opening of our second multisite campus, The Crossing Mid Rivers.