User transaction guidance

Abstract

A user guidance display system provides an animated display of example action being entered into a displayed image of the machine, to show a self-service machine user how the machine is to be operated. The various graphic images which show the prospective user what to do are created on a personal computer, using any of the commercially available graphic design programs. The binary file provided by the design program is processed, to compress the file into a special form having reduced memory requirements and having synergism with the image-displaying apparatus so as to permit fast and low overhead display of each image. By displaying a base image comprised of a number of image fragments, the base image can be changed during the course of guiding a user through a transaction. Animation is provided by sequentially displaying a plurality of image fragments under control of an animation list which, in turn, controls a timer. In order to provide for the convenient combination of graphic images and text, each image fragment is referenced to a text character location. The picture fragments, after being compressed, are stored in a memory in the self-service transaction machine. Text and picture images are sent to the display as messages under control of the transaction program executing in the computer of the self-service transaction machine. The messages are in the form of standard character strings in which a special graphic escape control code has been defined to distinguish between character text codes and graphic image fragment display instructions.