

Everyday Usability in Japan - bemmu
http://randomwire.com/everyday-usability-in-japan

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bemmu
Train ticket machines

\- You really can insert a ticket in any orientation. Rotated, flipped. The
machine turns the ticket around inside of it. If you get really into it,
there's an episode of a television series called "Project X" which has an
entire episode about the design of the machine (sadly I think this only exists
in Japanese).

\- Accepting multiple coins in a vending machine simultaneously is cool, but I
wouldn't go as far as describing it as "as fast as you can throw them". Still
even being able to put more than one it at a time is a huge improvement.

\- A person really pops up from inside the machine if you need assistance. I
was startled when it happened to me though :)

Ticket gates

\- While it's cool that the gates remain open unless a wrong ticket is
inserted, it makes it more startling when you do insert a wrong ticket. Now
you don't know whether you have sinned until you almost walk into the gates
that suddenly stop you.

\- About honesty. Yeah, I think the machine would work just fine without even
having real gates, as 99% would pay anyway. In local buses the drivers don't
bother to actually count your payment and just assume it's right.

Toilet controls

\- Japan has not gone too far. Once you get over your initial hesitation and
get used to these, you can't go back. Now not having one seems like a silly
waste of paper. Google has these.

\- Way too many buttons? Yeah, the flush button placing not being standardised
sucks. Sometimes you wave your hand in front of the toilet to flush it,
sometimes there is a digital button. But 99% of the time there is a physical
lever too.

Restaurant ticket machines

\- Having pictures is awesome, as it can be kind of hard to picture exactly
what you get by just text even in your own native language if you are not
familiar with a dish. Not having to use staff time to count money just makes
sense, although creates a stingier feeling, so this probably wouldn't work
anywhere where you might want to bring a date. But efficient transactions make
me happy.

Fax machines

\- Sometimes when I order things for Candy Japan, the manufacturers still seem
to prefer receiving their order by fax and might just ignore email.

ATMs

\- Japanese transfers suck. You need to enter amount, bank name, bank branch
name and account code. Why the bank name and branch name cannot be just
encoded in the account code is bizarre. You have to know the readings to kanji
for bank / branch name to be able to make the correct selection or separately
enter a code for them, which you don't always know.

\- You enter a bank book and it actually physically flips the pages of it and
writes things on it with a dot matrix printer inside the ATM. Again kind of
bizarre and I'm amazed it works.

\- Sometimes there can be four different vendor's ATMs right next to each
other in a row instead of one machine that could be used for all.

\- You can deposit money, which I guess is kind of cool if you get a lot of
cash payments. But I think it would be better solved by not having people
receive cash in the first place by promoting use of cards in transactions.

