When Clients Stopped Needing Developers

Self-service kiosks have an awkward commercial reality: every client wants their own. Their own branding, their own journey, their own promotions.

If each of those requests goes through development, the product stops being a product and becomes a queue.

Making configuration the product

The way out was a content management system for the kiosk itself. Clients could manage the steps of the customer journey, the interface and branding, products and promotions, accessibility, languages and payment options. Standard content tools could not do this, because a journey is not a page. It is a sequence of decisions.

I describe how it works, piece by piece, in the anatomy of the kiosk.

What must remain impossible to break

The editor was the visible part of the work. The real design question was another one.

Payment behaviour and fiscal compliance could not be something a client could accidentally switch off. A published card could not be edited in the middle of a working day, so every change had to happen on a copy. The freedom only worked because the dangerous parts were out of reach.

What changed

The relationship with clients changed more than the software did. They stopped waiting for us and started owning their own kiosks. Our work moved from answering requests to improving what everybody used.

The objection

Self-service tools can become a burden. Give people too many settings and you have only moved the complexity to them. Each option has to earn its place, which is why we even let each brand choose which fields it sees.

Before designing the editor, decide what must stay out of reach.