Today in the morning, right after boxing, I went to the 'Bundespolizeidirektion' (main office of the national police), which happens to be the place you need to go to if you want to register a 'Verein' (association, society) in Vienna. (The Verein I registerd was Vienna.pm ...). As the Bundespolizeidirektion is a quite important building, you have to leave an id card to get an access permit (which needs to be stamped by the person you visit..). So when I entered the building the police officer doing duty there told me to get such an permit in the first room on the right. So I turned right, passed a door clearly labled 'Ausgang' ('Exit'), when suddenly she yelled at me to enter the first room on the right.
Me: "You mean the one with the big 'Exit'-Sign on it?"
She: "Ahm, well, yes..."
well...
Later I visited (for the first time) my new tax accountant. I enter the elevator, and instead of the usual buttons there's one really big touchscreen-like thing looking like a greatly magnified telephone dial pad. The house has five floors. The elevator offers my up to nine floors (or maybe even more, if I can use two digits...) Well, I was curious if I would skyrocket to the non-existent nineth floor, so I pressed '9'. But instead of some exciting climb to imaginary floors followed by some free-falling experiences, the elevator just did 'beeep' and displayed 'Err' (in english). Tough luck...
Not only has the computer world failed to create truly usable interfaces in the past 7 decades, now this ineptitude is unnecessarily leaking out to the physical world.
I thought those keypad devices for selecting a bell to ring on highrises are an abomination when I first encountered one (many years ago), but now similar designs are popping up everywhere.
Madness.
