Product Design: "The Dream Station" 
Client: Spielo Gaming International
Award: Editor's Choice Award 1999 
@ Design Engineering Awards

The next time you play 6/49 or ProLine, take a closer look at the lottery terminal that generates your ticket. It might be the Dream Station.

Spielo Gaming International's client, the Atlantic Lottery Corp (ALC) in Dieppe, N.B., needed a machine that could produce and sell ALC online lottery products and services in a retail environment.

Of that request came this 18X12.5X12 in. 30 lb. Lottery terminal, which was produced and engineered by a design team at MASS Engineered Design Inc. in Toronto, Ont.

One of the big challenges for the design team at MASS was that it had to fit within a small footprint in retail locations and it had to be easy to operate. Its basic configuration consists of a touch screen interface, an LCD panel, a thermal printer and a reader capable of reading selection slips, one and two-dimensional bar codes and signatures. It was designed around an open PC-based architecture, using a Windows NT operating system. Any changes to the system can be downloaded through data lines.

"Aesthetic appeal played a big part in the Dream Station's design. A series of sketches and concepts were presented to a focus group and the feedback from that group determined its design criteria," says Dennis Kappen, the senior industrial designer on the project at MASS.

Considering that this Station will be operated by a cashier in a busy retail environment, the choice to use thermal printer paper shows that the design team was thinking ahead.

Anyone who has waited in a store line while a cashier fusses over fixing a paper jam, changing the ribbon or reloading paper in a cash register, knows how frustrating that wait can be.

Thermal printing reduces the need to change ribbons. Its case of paper loading almost eliminates paper jams. Again, with the user in mind, its tilt screen can be ergonomically-adjusted to accommodate varying counter and employee heights.

The design of an integral structural foam base eliminated the need for intensive sheet metal stamping. With design cycle life in mind, this product is almost completely made of recyclable polymers.

The look of the Dream Station was intended to be futuristic. The aim was to create a "science fiction appeal that would serve as a visual trigger for casual lottery players," says Kappen.

The time taken from design to prototype was five months. The entire project was executed using CAD design. 3-D CAD detailing for the design of the plastic shells was done using Pro/Engineer. Rapid prototypes in stereolithography (SLA) and selective laser sintering (SLS) were made to ratify the design for form and function.

"Watch for it in convenience stores, grocery stores, drug stores and lotto booths."