Cleaning up touchscreens: UK innovation agency redesigns self-service kiosks

Design and innovation agency Special Projects have created the Moving Buttons concept, a hygienic interface for touchscreens which ensures customers always touch a clean surface when using a self-service kiosk in public. The design, which helps reduce the risk of Covid-19 transmission, could help supermarkets and airlines ensure safety of customers as the UK begins to ease lockdown.

By using a software update, the Moving Buttons concept works by moving the position of buttons around the screen for each new customer. Up to 50 are able to use a touchscreen without tapping the same spot as someone else. Special Project’s goal is to change the way customers interact with self-checkouts, ticket machines and ATMs, among others.

When the screen needs a clean, the system alerts a member of staff and positions the most frequently used buttons in the immediate vicinity of previous presses to encourage minimal screen interaction.

“As we emerge from this public health crisis, we want businesses to consider how we might seamlessly embed hygiene into technologies which have become a part of the fabric of our everyday lives. The Moving Buttons interface provides a very simple but potentially very impactful solution, and one which we hope will help demonstrate the potential of innovative interface design in keeping us safe in the future,” says Adrian Westaway, Principal of Special Projects.

The team hopes Moving Buttons will inspire manufacturers of digital kiosks to innovate and update their interfaces, seamlessly embedding hygiene into their products in order to create cleaner interactions for users.