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I have a friend in Japan who used to own a small seafood restaurant. At the end of the day, before closing up shop, she would send a fax to her supplier at the
by dmit 7y ago
I have a friend in Japan who used to own a small seafood restaurant. At the end of the day, before closing up shop, she would send a fax to her supplier at the local fish market with a list of things she needed for tomorrow. Take a printed form, circle the necessary ingredients, fax it. Got any additional notes? Just write it at the bottom. Only took a minute.
A modern solution for this use case would be a custom website or a mobile app. Now, even if you disregard for a moment the cost of developing/running/maintaining those things, the UX and reliability of paper and pencil for this use case is far superior to mucking around on your phone or PC.
- bobthepanda 7y agoIf it’s just a shopping list, what does fax offer that SMS wouldn’t?
- equalunique 7y agoA hard copy for your filing cabinet.
- bassman9000 7y agoCircle items VS awkwardly typing on a tiny screen where you can't see the whole form Ask a 50+ person to choose between large "screen" and manual big circling motion vs phone typing
- oska 7y agoThe equivalent to circling things on paper is selecting check boxes next to items on a touch screen. Which is just as easy, if not even easier (easy to cancel a selection which is not so easy once something is already circled on paper).
- lenkite 7y agoMy Dad who has Parkinson's despises small mobile phone touchscreens that require him to awkwardly press tiny areas. A4 Paper rules the day.
- oska 7y agoSo he would presumably struggle with a piece of paper the size of a small mobile phone too. Why contrast a small phonescreen with a piece of A4 paper when touchscreens also come in A4 size?
- bassman9000 7y agoeasy to cancel Easy to throw a paper away. The equivalent to circling things on paper is selecting check boxes next to items on a touch screen Form and fax he already has. The app, and server infrastructure of the provider, he has not. I would have zero incentive to change a perfectly working and cheap system.
- morsch 7y agoA modern solution could be as simple as an email or a whatsapp message. You could reuse the same form and send an image with your phone. I agree that it's more of a "side-grade" than an upgrade.
- h1d 7y agoYeah but data aggregation and accounting aren't linked.