[July 25, 2019] When you’ve been in this business long enough, you start to pick up on common Athlete habits and behaviors. Sometimes the behavior surprises and delights you in a positive way, and sometimes it’s just plain confusing.
Enter this post-race scenario we’ve all seen time and time again: An Athlete finishes their race and immediately wants to know their time. They make their way to the onsite results kiosk, find their result, and then take out their phone. With their camera focused on frame, they snap a photo of their on-screen result to have as a keepsake or to share out with friends and family. This sounds like a great thing until you factor in the glare from the laptop screen, sweaty keyboard, and the mess of cables in the background. This is no way to commemorate the occasion.
And when you’ve been in the industry as long as we have, you start to realize just how difficult changing that Athlete behavior can be, for better or for worse. Instead of fighting it, we’ve come up with an onsite results option that embraces the way Athletes and Spectators currently interact and share their results and achievements.
All these factors are why we are thrilled to introduce a completely redesigned onsite kiosk interface that supports individual result printing with no extra software required.
We started this project with two goals in mind:
- Design a delightful and robust Kiosk Individual Results Page that answers all the major questions an Athlete immediately has upon crossing the finish line.
- Design and offer multiple paths for an Entry to get to their Official Result with detailed result information.
We’re excited to say we’ve had incredible success with both. In essence, we found a better way to get people to a more shareable piece of content and we can’t wait to share. Check it out below!
Results Worth Sharing
Past iterations of KIRP pages got the job done, but even we can admit weren’t the most visually engaging. We got right down to it and redesigned the page to show results worth snapping a pic of.
User Experience Designer Drew Hansen speaks to his thoughts behind the redesign, “The main goal with the redesign for the Athlinks kiosk was to increase legibility, usability and an overall visual aesthetic improvement. Hearing feedback from event organizers and athletes, we wanted to address these concerns and add highly requested new features like the ability to print a result receipt. The design team plans to monitor feedback and continuously iterate and improve upon the strong foundation we have released.”
In addition to a more pleasing design, the new IRP displays more information as well. The modern look supports up to six divisions on a single KIRP (improved from the previous version that only supports 3 divisions). You’ll also notice the Division “Bubbles” that animate and fill up the closer an Athlete is to becoming a division winner. A full bubble = First place!
QR Code Enabled
In addition to a more robust and aesthetically pleasing results Kiosk, individual pages now display QR codes on-screen. When Athletes visit their KIRP and frame up their phone to take a picture of their results – either directly from the Kiosk screen OR from a printed receipt – the camera automatically detects the QR code and offers Athletes and Spectators seamless navigation to their IRP on Athlinks.com or via the Athlinks Mobile App.
Print It Out
Meeting Athletes at the peak of their onsite results journey wouldn’t be complete without providing the ability to print out those coveted results. Easily configured and hooked up to any Mac or Chromebook computer via USB, printing receipts with QR codes are available with just the click of a button.
Printing details include:
- Printer support can be toggled on or off per kiosk
- Paper is inexpensive and thermal printing requires no ink
- Browser Support is currently limited to Chrome, but could change in the future
- Device Support includes Mac and Chromebook OS – (Windows is NOT currently supported due to an issue with the Windows version of Chrome that is currently being addressed by Google and Microsoft)
- Once connected, the kiosk interface remembers the last printer that was connected
- Our Printer Connection Status modal allows anyone, including volunteers, to connect a supported printer
- Receipts include the time they were printed to help solve any Result / Timer-related questions
Video Demo with Product Manager, Nick Wiegand
Check out this short video of Nick demonstrating the configuration, setup, and use of the Results Printer in this demo video.
For our first iteration of the Results Printer receipt contains the following information:
- Event Name
- Event Date
- Event Location
- Race Name
- Athlete Name
- Athlete Bib
- Athlete Final Time
- Athlete Final Pace
- QR Code with Direct Link to IRP
- ‘Time of Day’ Printed
Recommended Printer and Printer Paper
While we chose a common printing protocol that supports hundreds of thermal USB printers, we are recommending a tried and true tested printer that our Engineers and Product Team explicitly chose based on factors such as reliability, price, speed, and simplicity – Epson TM-T20II Direct Thermal Printer USB – Monochrome – Desktop Receipt Printer.
You can easily purchase these thermal printers online by following this Amazon link here. Prices range from $100 to $150. There are also many options on the market that allow the purchase of bulk printer paper stock, such as Thermal King Amazon link; however, paper can often be found at your local office supply store.
For everything else you need to know, read through our KnowledgeBase article here. And as always, with any questions, please reach out at info@athlinks.com.
