In 2005, a prospect came to us as a result of finding on line our experience with loyalty systems. Their client owned and ran a well-known theme park that was in the process of completing a refurbishment to one of its attractions. They wanted to encourage foot fall in this part of the park by having their visitors (participants were expected to be under the age of 15) collect a series of stamps from certain rides, then “scanning” the stamp at a central station. This station was to be custom built to look like a pirate treasure chest and it was to have a scanner, printer and touch screen display on each of the four outer faces. These would operate independently but link to a central database and application that would keep track of the visitor and their stamp “collection”. When the visitor had achieved the requisite number of stamps they would be granted a voucher that gives the visitor access to a special prize draw. Also, there could be random prizes awarded through the day according to various random factors including the number of prizes, their value and target demographic.

To deliver this project, I designed and built a prototype promotion unit. The wooden box shell contained a small form factor pc (using a pc104 motherboard) with a touchscreen, bar code reader, mag stripe reader and receipt printer. The unit required 13A mains power but otherwise was self- standing. Having built the hardware, I wrote an application that would accept a bar code ticket (to register the player), record the user’s selection from the touch screen which showed 6 picture icons (the idea being that the player would match the icon to their ticket picture) and then print a voucher on the “kiosk” printer that they could take to the relevant outlet (drinks voucher, ride etc). This proved that all the major capabilities were addressed and the Marketing Director was very enthusiastic.