Interface design for quick paint dispensing

Professional machines when used in a retail environment can be challenging for normal users to operate and use.

With the increasing growth of malls and super centres, self service kiosks and self service stations have become more acceptable in the Indian subcontinent. We worked on this project to create a retail paint dispensing solution for home owners.

The Dispenser user interface was PC driven and demanded a computer savvy operator to service the customers.

Close observation of the retail environment and user behaviour led us to an interesting insight. People are very choosy about their colors but they often tend to spend a lot of time doing that and need some hand holding in the process.

We found that there was an opportunity for simplifying the paint selection process by guiding and assisting the home owners. We asked ourselves, Can we offer them “colours of the month” or ” colours of the region” or “colours of the season” options that could be dynamic and changed frequently? This led to the creation of a unique hybrid user interface mixing the colour swatches with an embedded tactile switches as user input device. The result was a simplified paint selection and dispensing experience