3 ms·

Printers and scanners are complicated, and I say this as a 40 yo. There was a time when they weren't digital, and it was enough to just "hit the big button".

by stuaxo 4y ago

Printers and scanners are complicated, and I say this as a 40 yo. There was a time when they weren't digital, and it was enough to just "hit the big button". More modern systems you often have to scan some employee card and navigate various screens before you can start. Printers are are always a bit of pain, working out where the nearest one is - sometimes drivers don't work etc.

suction 4y ago
It's just a function of Japanese-designed UX. "Easy" symbolises "cheap" in Japanese culture, the more buttons and steps and menus the better.
- csdvrx 4y ago
  Interesting take. Do you have links to support that claim?
Joker_vD 4y ago
Printers are almost never named sensibly (e.g. "Room 801 near the door"), instead you either see an IP or its model name.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  That's not usually what I've seen in offices. Instead, it's some utterly brain-dead naming scheme that the IT department came up with, where the only sensible part is that, usually, the printer's name has the floor number in the name, but aside from that it's just some random alphanumeric crap that's completely unhelpful for actually finding the damn thing. The best way of figuring out where to print is to take 30 minutes walking around your floor, looking for publicly-accessible printers, and writing down their names, and then going back to your PC and looking for those. And yeah, in some places you really have to use the printer's control panel to find out the printer's IP address.
crispyambulance 4y ago
Yes. They ARE complicated and this is compounded by the fact that you almost never need to use one-- until you REALLY need to use one. At that point it becomes a race to print to the right printer (because they're almost never named in a logical way). Or worse, add a printer that the IT department installed months ago and you had ignored until you needed to use it. And finally, diagnose problems and fix jams which can be an interesting exercise with varying degrees of frustration depending on the model of the printer and its condition.

by stuaxo 4y ago

suction 4y ago

It's just a function of Japanese-designed UX. "Easy" symbolises "cheap" in Japanese culture, the more buttons and steps and menus the better.

csdvrx 4y ago
Interesting take. Do you have links to support that claim?

Joker_vD 4y ago

Printers are almost never named sensibly (e.g. "Room 801 near the door"), instead you either see an IP or its model name.

midoridensha 4y ago
That's not usually what I've seen in offices. Instead, it's some utterly brain-dead naming scheme that the IT department came up with, where the only sensible part is that, usually, the printer's name has the floor number in the name, but aside from that it's just some random alphanumeric crap that's completely unhelpful for actually finding the damn thing. The best way of figuring out where to print is to take 30 minutes walking around your floor, looking for publicly-accessible printers, and writing down their names, and then going back to your PC and looking for those. And yeah, in some places you really have to use the printer's control panel to find out the printer's IP address.

crispyambulance 4y ago

Yes. They ARE complicated and this is compounded by the fact that you almost never need to use one-- until you REALLY need to use one. At that point it becomes a race to print to the right printer (because they're almost never named in a logical way). Or worse, add a printer that the IT department installed months ago and you had ignored until you needed to use it. And finally, diagnose problems and fix jams which can be an interesting exercise with varying degrees of frustration depending on the model of the printer and its condition.