How it works

This article walks through what a customer sees, in order, from the moment they approach a BoothIQ kiosk to the moment they pick up their prints. It's a high-level tour — every screen has its own deeper article in the Customer Experience section (coming soon).

Who this is for: Operators and installers who want to understand what BoothIQ actually does before they put one in a venue.

The customer journey at a glance

If the customer chooses Phone Print instead of strips or 4×6, they take a slightly different path through a Wi-Fi photo upload flow. We cover that at the end of this article.

Step 1: Welcome screen

The kiosk shows a looping background video, plays soft background music, and pulses a glowing START button. A friendly voice prompt repeats every so often inviting customers to tap the screen.

This is also the screen the booth returns to whenever:

• A session finishes successfully.
• A customer walks away mid-session and the kiosk times out.
• The booth has been idle for a while.

Step 2: Choose a product

After the customer taps START, they land on the product selection screen. They see a tile for each product you have enabled:

• Photo Strips — classic booth strips, usually with multiple shots per print.
• 4×6 Photos — full-size 4×6 inch prints.
• Smartphone Print — uploads photos from the customer's phone over a local Wi-Fi network and prints them.

Each tile shows the price. A small credits indicator at the top of the screen shows the customer how much they've already loaded into the booth, or Free Play if you've put the booth in free mode.

Step 3: Pick a template

For strips and 4×6 the customer now picks a template — the layout and design that will frame their photos. Templates are organized by category (for example: Classic, Birthday, Holiday).

For photo strips there are also three style modes:

• Templates — the design as-is.
• Black & White — the same design with a B&W filter applied.
• Color (with logo) — the design with your business logo placed in a designated area.

Seasonal categories show and hide themselves automatically based on the date, so a Christmas category disappears in February without you doing anything.

Step 4: Look at the camera

A short instruction screen tells the customer where to stand and shows them a live preview from the camera so they can position themselves. This is mostly a "get ready" beat — the actual countdown happens on the next screen.

Step 5: Take photos

The capture screen runs the photo-taking sequence:

1. The kiosk shows the live camera preview.
2. A voice and on-screen counter call out 3 … 2 … 1 … Smile.
3. The screen briefly flashes white to confirm the photo was taken.
4. The captured photo appears as a tab so the customer can see what they got.
5. If the template needs more than one photo, the next countdown starts immediately.

The customer can retake any photo before continuing. Templates can use rectangular, rounded, circular, heart, or petal-shaped photo areas, and BoothIQ handles the cropping for them.

Step 6: Quick offer screen

After the last photo, the customer sees a preview of what their print will look like and three options:

• Edit — open the photo editor to add filters or stickers.
• Continue — accept it as-is and move on.
• Retake — start the capture sequence over.

If the customer doesn't choose anything, the screen warns them and then auto-continues so the booth doesn't get stuck.

Step 7: (Optional) Edit photos

If the customer taps Edit, they get an Instagram-style editor with:

• Twenty-plus filter presets they can swipe through.
• A filter intensity slider.
• An emoji sticker overlay (drag, resize, rotate, up to ten stickers per photo).

This is purely optional. Most customers skip it.

Step 8: (Optional) Extra prints and cross-sell

Next BoothIQ offers extra prints and cross-sell options:

• Extra copies of the same product, with operator-configurable discounts for buying more than one.
• Cross-sell to a 4×6 when the customer originally ordered strips, using the same photos they just took.

The screen shows a live preview of the cross-sell product so the customer knows what they're buying. Skipping this is fine.

Step 9: Pay

The payment screen shows the order summary, the template preview, the number of copies, and the total price. It then waits for the customer to load enough credits.

Credits can come from:

• A coin or bill acceptor wired into the booth (this is the most common setup).
• A card reader, if your booth has one.
• Operator-added credits in the admin dashboard.
• Free Play mode, in which case payment is skipped entirely.

As soon as the customer's credit balance meets or exceeds the total, the screen advances automatically to printing. If the customer changes their mind, they can hit Back to cancel.

Step 10: Printing and thank you

While the printer is producing the photo, the customer sees a friendly "Printing your photos" screen with an estimated time. BoothIQ sends the print job in the background, retries if the printer hiccups, and lets the customer move on to a final thank-you screen even if printing is still finishing.

After the thank-you screen, the kiosk returns to the welcome screen, ready for the next customer.

The Phone Print flow

If the customer picked Smartphone Print in Step 2, the kiosk skips the camera and shows a phone upload screen instead:

1. The kiosk creates a local Wi-Fi network (no internet required).
2. It displays a QR code the customer scans with their phone.
3. The phone connects to that local Wi-Fi and opens a small upload web page hosted on the kiosk itself.
4. The customer picks photos from their phone and uploads them.
5. The kiosk shows the uploaded photo and lets the customer crop, zoom, and rotate it inside the print frame.
6. From there the flow rejoins the normal Pay → Print → Thank you path.

There is no app to install on the customer's phone — it's just a web page served by the kiosk over Wi-Fi.

What happens if something goes wrong

BoothIQ has dedicated error screens for the most common failures:

• Camera error screen if the camera disconnects or refuses to capture.
• Hardware error screen for printer or payment device failures.

Both screens explain what's wrong, log the details, and let you retry without losing the customer's paid session. We cover these in detail in Troubleshooting › Reading error screens (coming soon).

Idle and timeout behavior

BoothIQ aggressively returns to the welcome screen if a customer walks away. Most screens time out after 60-180 seconds with a warning before they reset, so the booth never gets stuck on an abandoned half-session. You'll find the exact timeout values in Reference › Timeouts and idle behavior (coming soon).

Next steps

• Site and venue requirements — What your venue needs to provide for the kiosk.
• What's in the box — See the components a BoothIQ kiosk ships with.