Mucking about with stand-alone displays (especially touch-screen controlled ones).
Having had the experience of watching a large number of young people using a particular touch-screen display (whilst I was tweaking another one nearby) I've realised a few things needed to be sorted.
Operation should be 'on mouse down' - this means on the initial click down of a mouse button or on touching the screen.
Why?
Often people will press a mouse button down or keep their finger pressed onto the screen (often with increasing pressure) and will not release as they expect an action to occur. Only once they become increasingly frustrated will they release the pressure and try clicking-on again by which time the action is likely to have started if the operation requires 'on mouse release'. Unfortunately the default setting in a lot of software seems to be 'on mouse release'.
Operation should be accompanied by a system beep.
Why?
Kye and I had thought that 'beep on action' was unnecessary. We believed a beep accompanying every click or touch would eventually drive any nearby staff to distraction. However the sound also seems to indicate to the display user that their action has made an effect and they then wait for the action to occur. This is particularly helpful as many display presentations can take a number of seconds to make a change visible to a user.
Using both tips A and B should help the longevity of your mice/mouses, action buttons or touch-screens saving you the expense and time of replacing them. They should also make the end user's experience enjoyable rather than potentially frustrating.
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If your display is on a PC that is prone to crashing out of 'kiosk mode' to the desktop then a large short-cut icon in the centre of the screen leading back to the 'kiosk' window and entitled something like "Tap the icon and play the game" is likely to be the first thing a young person will click - before they try and find alternative sources of amusement such as password locking-out of your system.
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If using Windows Power Options then setting the Power Scheme to Presentation and the press action for the PC's power button to 'Power Off" will ensure that your system will not go to sleep or power down. At the end of a day whoever has been charged with turning off the PCs only has to press the power button on the front of the box instead of the whole Start, Shut Down, change from Restart to Shutdown, Click OK thing.
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Another useful alternative is to use software which will start-up and shut-down your PC at predetermined times. Try http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/system/fwshutdown.html for a few freeware flavours. (We happen to have used Slawdog's Smart Shutdown successfully - seems to do what it says it should but please try a few others and let us know how you fare.)