Reserve Ahead
testandgo's enterprise customers needed a way to guarantee product availability before arriving at the kiosk, prompting the design of a reservation flow connected directly to the website. Without the ability to collect email addresses, I designed a code-based retrieval system that required no account creation and worked within strict privacy constraints. The result was a seamless website-to-kiosk experience that accommodated feature-gated locations and dispensed products automatically upon code entry.
The Challenge
Reservations Without an Account
After multiple enterprise customers requested the feature, we needed to build an experience connected to the website that allowed users to reserve a product online and guarantee it would be available when they arrived at the kiosk. A key constraint was that we could not require email collection due to business and privacy considerations, ruling out the most common method of reservation confirmation and follow-up. Without an email, we needed an entirely different identification and retrieval mechanism that still felt intuitive to the user. Further complicating the build, only some locations would have this feature enabled, meaning the experience had to gracefully account for kiosks where Reserve Ahead was not available. The solution had to feel simple on the surface while accommodating significant variability under the hood.
The Strategy
Unlikely Inspiration
I studied a range of reservation flows to find the right model, including event ticketing, hotel and restaurant reservations, large retail, and curbside pickup, but each carried assumptions around accounts, emails, or staff handoffs that didn't apply here. Surprisingly, the closest parallel was food ordering to-go, where a user selects a location, browses available items at that location, and confirms an order, closely mirroring our flow of choose location, browse products, place and confirm reservation. Since we have no employees at the kiosk to hand off an order, we needed a way to trigger the dispense that was more intentional than standard browsing. We took inspiration from dual-action idle screens (Spanish/English, Check-in/Check-out) and placed the reservation entry point directly on the kiosk idle page as a clear binary choice.
The Solution
Browse or Retrieve
I added a Reserve Ahead entry point to the kiosk locator on testandgo.com, routing users into a variant of the kiosk web app built on the same responsive page layouts from the design system. At the end of the reservation flow, users receive a unique code they enter directly at the kiosk, which presents a binary home screen of "Browse" or "Retrieve Reservation" to keep the entry point clear and intentional. Upon entering the code, the kiosk dispenses the product automatically, with a 3-day pickup window before the reservation expires since there is no email available for reminders. To protect inventory integrity, reservation availability is cut off when a kiosk reaches 2 or fewer products in stock.
Reserve Ahead launched as part of a kiosk program now deployed across 24 states, serving 50+ program partners and logging 161K+ dispenses. Reservation-based planning directly reduces the stockout risk that threatens access in underserved communities.