Abstract:
A self-service terminal (SST) interacts with a human operator by accessing one or more documents that include: (1) text-based content formatted for display on a text-only display device, and (2) instructions for rendering the text-based content with graphical enhancements on multimedia display device. The SST uses the instructions in the one or more documents to render the text-based content with graphical enhancements on a multimedia display device.

Description:
BACKGROUND 
       [0001]    Self-service terminals (SSTs), such as automated teller machines (ATMs) used in the banking industry or self-service kiosks used in the airline and fast-food industries, are becoming increasingly common in all areas of commerce all over the world. Many SSTs, particularly in the ATM industry, have two separate visual displays that allow the SST to interact with human users—one on the “front” side of the SST (a “front panel display”) that allows a customer of the business entity that owns the SST to engage in a self-service transaction with the business entity, and one on the “rear” side of the SST (a “rear panel display”) that allows service personnel employed by the business entity to service the SST. 
         [0002]      FIG. 1  shows such a system. The SST  100  includes, among other components, a core processing module  110  that provides (1) a “user interface” on a front panel display  120  to allow interaction with a customer of the business entity that owns or manages the SST (where the customer is the “user” of the SST) and (1) an “operator interface” on a rear panel display  120  to allow interaction with service personnel employed by the business entity (where the service personnel is the “operator” of the SST). 
         [0003]    In general, in an SST having both front and rear panel displays like those in  FIG. 1 , the front panel display allows for presentation of more complex and data-rich information than the rear panel display allows. The front panel display typically is able to display information in multimedia format (e.g., text combined with images, graphics, motion), while the rear panel display is able to display text only. What&#39;s more, in an SST for use in the financial services industry, the operator application that drives the SST&#39;s interaction with an operator through the rear panel display must comply with the CEN/XFS standard for Text Terminal Units (TTUs), which defines a standard format for operator interactions with SSTs, while the operator application that drives interaction with an operator through the front panel display need not comply with the CEN/XFS standard. Up to now, the CEN/XFS standard for TTUs has not supported enhanced multimedia functionality or graphically rich displays and thus has required the development of separate operator applications for standard TTU interfaces and for multimedia interfaces. 
         [0004]    In particular, the CEN/XFS standard contemplates text-only displays and thus provides only for delivery of text-based TTU “forms” or raw text data. TTU forms are made up of a series of “fields” that each contains a text item along with instructions for displaying the text item at a certain position on a TTU display. The operator application that drives interaction with an operator through a TTU display reads data from an appropriate TTU form, renders text on the TTU display according to the instructions contained in the form, receives input from the operator in reply to the displayed text, and performs some action in response to the operator&#39;s input, typically accessing another TTU form and presenting a new textual display to the operator in doing so. A renderer interface module in the operator application serves to read and interpret the TTU forms and, in turn, to interpret the input received from the operator. 
         [0005]      FIG. 2  shows a traditional SST  200  configured to allow operator interaction on both a front panel display  210  with multimedia capabilities and a rear panel display  220  that complies with the TTU standard. The SST  200  includes interface switching logic  240  that allows the operator (or the SST) to select which of the displays to use and includes two separate operator applications—a TTU operator application  250  and a multimedia operator application  270 —to drive the operator&#39;s interaction with the SST through the displays. 
         [0006]    If the operator or the SST selects the rear panel display  220  for use in the interaction between the operator and the SST, the interface switching logic  240  invokes the TTU operator application  250  to drive the operator interaction. In driving the interaction, the TTU operator application  250  accesses a set of TTU forms  260  that comply with the CEN/XFS TTU standard and delivers text-based screens to the rear panel display  220  accordingly. The TTU operator application includes the renderer interface module that interprets both the TTU forms and the input received from the operator in reply to text displayed on the rear panel display  220 . 
         [0007]    If the operator or the SST selects the front panel display  210  for the operator interaction, the interface switching application  240  invokes the multimedia operator application  270  to drive the interaction. In a traditional SST, the multimedia operator application  270  need not comply with the CEN/XFS standard as it is custom-designed by or for the business entity to allow operator interaction through the front panel display  210 . 
         [0008]    It is important to note that, for operator interaction with both front panel and rear panel displays in a traditional SST, the SST  200  must support two separate operator applications—one that complies with the CEN/XFS standard and one that does not. Both of these operator applications include both the business logic that drives the flow of information to the operator and the display-interface logic that drives the display of this information through the selected display device. Therefore, if the business entity that owns or manages the SST wants to modify the business logic that governs the flow of the operator&#39;s interaction with the SST, it must modify two separate operator applications, one for each of the display devices, and reinstall both applications on the SST. 
       SUMMARY 
       [0009]    Described below is a system that is designed to separate (a) the business logic that is used to govern the flow of information to an operator who is interacting with the system from (b) the interface logic that drives the delivery of this information to the operator through either a text-based display device or a multimedia display device. One such system includes a self-service terminal (SST) that interacts with a human operator by accessing one or more documents that include: (1) text-based content formatted for display on a text-only display device, and (2) instructions for rendering the text-based content with graphical enhancements on multimedia display device. The SST uses the instructions in the one or more documents to render the text-based content with graphical enhancements on a multimedia display device. 
         [0010]    Other features and advantages will become apparent from the description and claims that follow. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0011]      FIGS. 1 and 2  are diagrams showing traditional self-service terminals (SSTs). 
           [0012]      FIG. 3  is a diagram showing an SST with separate operator (business logic) and renderer (display-interface logic) applications. 
           [0013]      FIG. 4  is a diagram showing an extension to the CEN/XFS TTU standard that is useful in implementing an SST like that of  FIG. 3 . 
           [0014]      FIG. 5  is a diagram showing a computer system suitable for use in implementing an SST like that of  FIG. 3 . 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       [0015]      FIG. 3  shows an SST  300  designed to separate (a) the business logic that is used to govern the flow of information to an operator who is interacting with the SST  300  from (b) the interface logic that drives the delivery of this information to the operator through either a text-based display device  310  (e.g., a rear panel display) or a multimedia display device  320  (e.g., a front panel display). In particular, the SST  300  includes an operator application  330 , in which the business logic resides, and separate renderer applications—a TTU renderer application  340  and a multimedia renderer application  350 —in which the display-interface logic resides. 
         [0016]    One technique that allows for separation of the business logic and the display-interface logic in this manner involves an extension of the CEN/XFS standard for TTU forms. As described above and as shown in  FIG. 4 , the CEN/XFS standard contemplates text-only displays and thus provides for delivery of text-based TTU forms that are made up of a series of text fields  400  containing text items, along with instructions for displaying the text items at certain positions on the TTU display. The CEN/XFS standard does provide, however, for a “format” field, the content of which is not defined by the standard but can contain any information to be interpreted by the display devices as formatting information. The SST  300  shown here extends the CEN/XFS standard by using this free field to define a “format” attribute  410  for each of the TTU forms, where the “format” attribute includes instructions for displaying much richer content—e.g., custom fonts, colors and animations for the text found in the fields of the TTU forms, as well as other multimedia items such as images and video clips—on the multimedia display device  320 . 
         [0017]    By using this free field to add “format” extensions to TTU forms, the SST  300  is able to store a set of extended TTU forms  370  that are used in rendering data at both the text-based and multimedia displays. A renderer interface module  360  sits between the operator application  330  and the TTU and multimedia renderer applications  340 ,  350  and interprets the extended TTU forms  370  as required to deliver the necessary content for display at the selected display device. The renderer interface module  360  also contains switching logic that allows the operator or the SST  300  to select which of the displays to use during the operator&#39;s interaction with the SST  300 . 
         [0018]    As the operator application  330  drives the SST&#39;s interaction with an operator through one of the display devices, the operator application  330  accesses the extended TTU forms  370  as necessary and delivers an appropriate one of the forms to the renderer interface module  360 . The renderer interface module  360  in turn reads and interprets the extended TTU forms and delivers the necessary information to the selected display device for use in displaying the form to the operator. If the operator or the SST has selected the text-based display device  310  for use in the operator interaction, the renderer interface module  360  ignores the “format” attribute in each of the forms and delivers the text-only portion of the form to the TTU renderer application  340 . If, on the other hand, the operator or the SST has selected the multimedia display device  320 , the renderer interface application  360  reads and interprets the “format” attribute of each form along with the data stored in the text fields and delivers any necessary formatting instructions to the multimedia renderer application  350 . The multimedia renderer application  350  in turn interprets the formatting instructions provided by the renderer interface module  360  and applies these instructions accordingly to create a multimedia display on the multimedia display device  320 . 
         [0019]    Alternatively, in some systems, the renderer interface module  360  ignores the “format” attribute altogether and simply passes the instructions it contains to the appropriate renderer application. In systems configured in this manner, the TTU renderer application  340  ignores the formatting instructions, whereas the multimedia renderer application  350  interprets the instructions to display rich multimedia content. The renderer interface module  360  in this case provides a common interface for the operator application  330  to each of the renderer applications. 
         [0020]    In some systems, the SST  300  is configured to deliver multimedia content not only to the multimedia display device  320  in the SST  300 , but also to one or more multimedia display devices  380  that do not belong to the SST  300 , such as a personal digital assistant (PDA) device carried by the operator. In these systems, the multimedia renderer application  350  delivers the multimedia content to the remote multimedia display device  380  through a network  390  or by some other remote communication mechanism, such as a radio frequency (RF) or infrared (IR) signal delivered directly to the remote device. Likewise, the SST  300  is configured in some instances to deliver multimedia content to a variety of display devices with different input and output characteristics (e.g., touch screens displays vs. displays that rely on keyboards for input) by providing a renderer application for each device with no changes necessary to the operator application. 
         [0021]    Unlike the traditional systems described in connection with  FIGS. 1 and 2  above, the SST  300  of  FIG. 3  includes a single operator application  330  that drives the flow of an operator&#39;s interaction with the SST  300 , regardless of which display device the operator or SST selects for use during the operator&#39;s interaction. A result is that the business entity who owns or manages the SST  300  is required to maintain only one operator application for the SST and, when modifying or replacing that application, can do so by replacing only one file on the SST  300 . 
         [0022]      FIG. 5  shows a general-purpose computer system  500  suited for use in implementing a self-service terminal (SST) like those described above. In this example, the SST is configured to serve as an automated teller machine (ATM) for use in conducting financial-services transactions. In general, the system  500  includes one or more processors  505 , one or more temporary data-storage components  510  (e.g., volatile and nonvolatile memory modules), and one or more persistent data-storage components  515  (e.g., optical and magnetic storage devices, such as hard and floppy disk drives, CD-ROM drives, and magnetic tape drives). The system  500  also includes one or more input devices, such as an encrypted PIN pad (EPP) module  530 , and one or more output devices, such as a display module  520 . The system  500  also typically includes many other modules  540  for use in conducting self-service transactions, such as a card reader, a cash dispenser, and a receipt printer, as well as a network interface module  550  that allows the SST to communicate with other devices through one or more networks. 
         [0023]    The system  500  includes a variety of files  535   1-5  stored in the persistent storage media  515 . These files include an operator application  535   1 , a renderer interface module  535   2 , a TTU renderer application  535   3 , a multimedia renderer application  535   4 , and extended TTU forms  535   5  like those described above. Some of these files, such as the operator application  535   1 , include executable program code that is read from the persistent storage media  515  and copied into memory  510  at run-time. The processor  505  executes this executable program code by retrieving program instructions from memory in a prescribed order. Other files, such as the extended TTU forms  535   3 , do not include executable program code, but rather take the form of documents that store information (or data) according to some prescribed format. 
         [0024]    The text above describes one or more specific embodiments of a broader invention. The invention also is carried out in a variety of alternative embodiments and thus is not limited to those described here. Many other embodiments are also within the scope of the following claims.