Wayfinding kiosk software for the screens you already have
DigiMaps turns a touchscreen into a digital wayfinding kiosk. Visitors search, pick a place and get step-by-step directions from a fixed “You are here”, then scan a QR code to take the route on their phone. It runs in a locked-down browser on Android, Windows and ChromeOS, and you manage every kiosk from Studio.
- 1 “You are here” is fixed where the kiosk stands, facing the way it faces. No beacons.
- 2 Home tiles come from the industry pack. This is the hospital set.
- 3 The dock sits low: Home, Search, Directory, language, Accessibility and Help.
Walk up, get a route, walk away. The kiosk forgets you.
The idle screen invites people in every venue language at once. A visitor picks their language and settings, gets a route, and leaves. A minute later the kiosk wipes everything they chose and waits for the next person.
03 Walked away.
- 0:00 Starts in Arabic Taps the Arabic start button on the attract screen.
- 0:19 Step-free, Cardiology Turns on step-free and picks أمراض القلب, Cardiology.
- 0:44 Scans the QR, walks away The route, language and step-free choice go with the phone.
- 1:44 Kiosk resets itself Search, route, language and settings wiped. New anonymous session. Back to attract.
Accessible mode turns on reach, larger text, step-free routes and spoken directions together, and resets with everything else. Accessible wayfinding on kiosks
Scan and go. The route moves to the visitor’s phone.
The kiosk draws the QR code itself, with no third-party QR service. The phone opens the same route in its browser, starting from the kiosk, in the same language and with the same step-free choice. No app and no sign-up.
1The kiosk at the main entrance shows the route and draws a QR code.
2Scan with the phone camera.
3The same route opens in the phone's browser.
Carries over
- The destination: Cardiology, Level 2
- The origin kiosk, so “You are here” stays at the main entrance
- The language the visitor chose
- The step-free choice
- The routing profile, such as wheelchair or stroller
Never carried
- Personal data. The kiosk collects none.
- Staff-only destinations
- Kiosk mode and the kiosk's device ID
No app and no sign-up. Opens in the phone's browser.
The QR code holds a plain link:maps.wayvale-hospital.example/v/wayvale-general?to=cardiology&kiosk=main-entrance&lang=en&accessible=1
Needs a reachable address. The phone has to open the map over your Wi-Fi or the internet. A kiosk with no public address shows a short explanation instead of a QR code that would not open. So far the hand-off is verified in browser tests; we check a real phone scan on your network during the pilot.
Works without beacons. The kiosk’s fixed position is the start of every route. When a phone blue dot makes sense
Staff get a little more. Visitors never see it.
A corner gesture and a PIN, or a staff sign-in, opens staff mode on any kiosk. Close it and the kiosk is a public screen again.
- Staff-only rooms
- Shown only in staff mode. Their links are never sent to phones.
- Statistics on the spot
- A PIN-protected overlay with the kiosk’s own usage figures
- PIN storage
- A salted hash, never the PIN itself, with lockout after failed attempts
- For visitors
- No login, no personal-data forms. “This kiosk does not collect personal information.”
Staff mode
Opened with a corner gesture. Locks after repeated wrong PINs.
Know a kiosk is down before a visitor tells you
Every kiosk checks in about once a minute. Studio’s Fleet page lists offline kiosks first, alerts you by e-mail and webhook, and lets you reload, screenshot or restart a screen from your desk.
kiosk.offline webhook.
K-02 Outpatients
30-day uptime
Settings
- Languages
- English, Arabic
- Idle reset
- 60 s
- Step-free by default
- Off
- Text size
- Standard
- Sunlight theme
- Off
- Graphics tier
- Automatic
Set up
- Place each kiosk on the plan with its facing direction and zone
- Seven display types, from indoor 4K portrait to outdoor 1080p and LED walls
- Per-kiosk language, idle reset, text size, voice volume, sunlight theme and graphics tier
- A device token per kiosk; only its digest is stored, and you can rotate it
Watch
- Status: Online, Offline, Never connected or Disabled
- Health: versions, memory, queued statistics, last error, ambient light
- Offline and back-online alerts by e-mail (through your mail relay) and webhook
- 30-day uptime per kiosk and a monthly uptime CSV for warranty reviews
Fix from your desk
- Identify, reload, clear cache, screenshot, restart
- Screenshots mask anything typed, and the last five are kept
- Restart needs a kiosk shell that allows it
- New map releases load only when the kiosk is idle, so no route is cut short
Health monitoring, kiosk offline alerts and monthly uptime reports are built in. They are reports, not an uptime guarantee.
What the kiosk needs
DigiMaps runs in a browser engine rather than as a native app, so the list is short. Check it against the spec sheet before you order.
Kiosk hardware
- Android
- Android signage boards, including Android 9 boards with 2 GB of memory
- Windows
- Windows kiosk PCs
- ChromeOS
- ChromeOS devices
- Screens
- Portrait or landscape, Full HD to 4K. Tablets, desktops and LED walls are display types too.
Software on the kiosk
- Browser engine
- Chromium or Android WebView, version 111 or newer
- Graphics
- WebGL 2. The map picks a lighter rendering tier on weaker boards.
- Shell
- A locked-down kiosk browser, such as Fully Kiosk Browser, or a WebView
- If it is too old
- A plain “display software too old” message instead of a blank screen
Network
- First start
- Needs a connection to load the published map once
- After that
- Search and directions work offline from the cached release
- Statistics
- Queued on the kiosk while offline, uploaded when it reconnects
An on-screen keyboard in eight scripts
The keyboard follows the language the visitor picks, so someone who chose Arabic types the department’s name in Arabic letters. Map label fonts are bundled for Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic. Devanagari and the other scripts need a font you supply.
- Latin English, French, Spanish and others
- Arabic العربية
- Persian فارسی
- Urdu اردو
- Cyrillic Русский (Russian)
- Hebrew עברית
- Greek Ελληνικά
- Devanagari Hindi, Marathi, Nepali
No on-screen layout yet: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi and other scripts. Visitors can still browse the directory and tap a place.
Questions facilities and IT teams ask
Do we need beacons for a wayfinding kiosk?
No. Each kiosk is placed on the plan with the direction it faces, so it knows exactly where “You are here” is. Routes start there and move to the visitor’s phone by QR code. Beacons only matter for a moving blue dot on phones, which is a separate, commissioned add-on.
What hardware does the kiosk software run on?
Android signage boards (including Android 9 boards with 2 GB of memory), Windows kiosk PCs and ChromeOS devices, with a Chromium or WebView engine at version 111 or newer and WebGL 2. Portrait or landscape, Full HD to 4K. We have not certified specific models, so we test your chosen hardware on site before go-live.
What happens if the network goes down?
A kiosk that has loaded the map once keeps working from its cached copy, with search and directions. Statistics queue on the kiosk and upload when the network returns. Studio shows the kiosk as offline and can alert you by e-mail and webhook.
How does a kiosk reset between visitors?
After 60 seconds with no touch (you can change this per kiosk), it clears the search, route, language and accessibility settings and starts a new anonymous session. Holding Home for 2 seconds starts over at once. The kiosk collects no personal data.
Can staff see things visitors can’t?
Yes, in staff mode, opened with a corner gesture and a PIN or a staff sign-in. Staff-only rooms appear only in staff mode, and their links are never sent to phones. The PIN is stored as a salted hash, with a lockout after repeated failures.
Do you supply the kiosk hardware?
DigiMaps is the software. DigiSigns, the company behind it, also supplies displays, video walls and digital totems. If you already have kiosks or a preferred kiosk maker, tell us the model and we will check it against the requirements above.
Bring us a kiosk, or the model number of one
In a 30-minute call we run the kiosk software on a sample venue, show the Fleet page and the QR hand-off, and check your hardware against the requirements above.