What fresh hell is this?

Our whole office building recently got new photocopiers. It has a colour touchscreen! I absolutely hate it.

First off, who still thinks resistive touchscreens are a good idea? I don’t want to poke at an icky, plasticky surface until it registers as a click after the umpteenth time.

The user interface itself makes this experience worse. Take logging in. You’re presented with a login screen. Easy! Right? Well… You would think that you could simply punch in your login with the keypad, but no, you have to click on the button labeled “User ID” (that looks nothing like a button), use a horrid onscreen-keyboard in a new window (granted, here you’re allowed to use the keypad), poke at another button the accept the input, and only then can you click the “Login” button (that looks nothing like a button).

Using the actual functions are even worse. Want to scan or fax? One physical button press followed by no less than five (successful) pokes at the screen. That’s if you accept the default settings. To change any of the settings you’ll need at least half an hour. I still don’t know how many levels of menus there are.

Oh, and every status message is printed out. Every. Single. One.

I hate it.

Here’s where I think Kyocera went wrong:

• Awful, awful input methods.
• Three-click-rule anyone? (I know it’s not an official rule, but come on)
• Unintuitive UI (they had to have more than one training session…for a freakin’ photocopier!)

Let me just note that there’s nothing wrong with the hardware. Or how the machine functions. It’s very good at what it does…but would it have killed them to hire someone in the know to do the user-interface?