Killing the queue.

The issue

Every Sandbox VR guest had to check in on a shared iPad kiosk. Enter your name, your email, your date of birth, whether you've played before, if it was anyone's birthday – all on a public device, often with a group of people behind you getting impatient.

For big groups it was a huge bottleneck. For privacy-conscious guests it was an immediate trust wall to climb. And for families with kids, it was a logistical nightmare — minors had a separate flow, which meant separate kiosks, which meant more queuing. Did your kid have an email address? Probably not.

The fix? Use the trusted tech that guests brought with them – their phones.

Three kiosks. No autofill. Everyone queuing.

Three iPad kiosks. No autofill. No pre-loaded booking data. Every person in the group queuing up individually to enter their details from scratch.

A common scenario might see a group of ~25 people out for a corporate party or team-building event. With one kiosk, checking in 25 guests could take up to 50 minutes. That's before anyone's put a headset on.

Beyond the time problem, there was a trust problem. Handing over personal information on a shared public screen isn't something everyone's comfortable with. We heard that clearly when we talked to both in-store staff and the internal ops and infrastructure teams — guests were visibly hesitant, and staff knew it.

Talking to the people who saw it every day

We started by talking to people — in-store staff who watched the kiosk flow play out every day, and internal ops and infra teams who understood the system constraints. That gave us a clear picture of where the friction was and what mattered most to fix.

Two priorities came out of that:

• Win trust from the startguests needed to feel comfortable handing over their details
• Cut check-in timeespecially for large groups and families

From there we mapped the existing flow, looked hard at where steps could be cut or collapsed, and wireframed a leaner version. We used Figma Make to get a rough POC in front of people quickly before moving to HiFi, then ran internal user testing before launch.

Check in on your own phone

A mobile web app. Guests scan a QR code — either from a confirmation email before they arrive, or from the kiosk when they get to the venue — and check in on their own phone in their own browser.

The first question is simple: who's checking in? An adult, an adult and minors, or minors only. That single choice branches the flow correctly and sets everything up from there.

Personal info comes first — the booker enters their own details. If there are minors in the group, they're added afterwards, with the parent signing the waiver on their own device on behalf of their kids. No separate kiosk flow. No second queue. One parent handles the whole family.

The waiver is signed digitally, in the same flow, on the guest's own phone. That's the trust piece — it's your device, your browser, your data. Not a shared screen.

Simple surface, complex underneath

The flow handles three distinct paths — adult only, adult with minors, and minors only — all branching from that first screen. Edge cases are covered too: removing a player, error states, language selection, future booking states. The full flow map gives a sense of how much complexity sits underneath what feels like a simple 5-step process.

20 minutes back, per group

A group of 25 used to take around 22 minutes to get through check-in. Now, everyone checks in simultaneously on their own phone. The whole group is through in under 2 minutes.

That's roughly 20 minutes back — per large group booking. Multiply that across a busy weekend and it's a meaningful operational shift. Faster throughput, less pressure on staff, and guests arriving at their experience in a better headspace than they would after queuing at a kiosk for 20 minutes.

The kiosk is still there as a fallback. But for most guests, they don't need to touch it at all.