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The story
A Yahoo News street interview reporting on elderly customers’ frustration with touchscreen ordering systems—now widespread at restaurants and chain stores—became a hot topic on 5ch’s “Whatever’s Live” board (Nanademo Jikkyo G). The article features comments from elderly people who want to order directly from staff but get told “please use the touchscreen,” which makes them angry. In the thread, sympathetic opinions—citing presbyopia (age-related farsightedness) making text hard to read, or difficulty keeping up with the interface—clashed with harsher takes dismissing it as simply a refusal to adapt. Many also pointed out that the tablets’ screens and navigation flow are just poorly designed to begin with.
(Person on the street, expressing opposition)
“With a big menu board you can just look and see it easily, right? That’s why I don’t like [tablets]. When I call out to the waitress, she just says ‘please use the tablet.’ That really ticks me off.”
“It’s such a hassle! Hard to use! It’s confusing. The screen keeps changing one after another. I just can’t keep up.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Because of presbyopia (age-related farsightedness), they can't see the small text
Their skin's too dry and cracked, so it doesn't register on the pcap [capacitive touchscreen] sensor
It's not easy at all
The photos are ridiculously tiny and you can't even zoom in
if you can't read that, you can't read any ad billboard or menu out there in the world
At the end of the day, it's outsourced to some contractor
and that contractor is just incompetent
The text is small and you can't even zoom in
GUI design takes actual sense and taste, you know
Being able to filter out troublesome customers like this is actually a benefit
If you can't read that text, your eyesight must be below 0.1 [roughly 20/200]
Someone like that couldn't even walk outside without glasses
I once worked part-time with an 80-year-old guy sent over from the Silver Human Resources Center [a job placement service for seniors], and he'd call people "hey, you" instead of by name
Honestly, that stung a little 🥲
Not a single 70-year-old I worked with ever did that, so I really felt the generational gap
Tablet ordering at places like Marugen, Sukiya, and Gusto [popular Japanese chain restaurants] is great
Whereas at Yoshinoya, having to look at the menu board at the counter and pick is such a hassle
It's that "why should I, the customer, have to [adapt]" mentality
You see a lot of that type among middle-aged guys
Touching this stuff for the first time at work after you're already an old man is a totally different level of experience from having used it since you were a kid or a young employee
Sure, there are old guys who can handle it fine, but the ratio of people who can't inevitably goes up the older you get
No way
Even among the Ice Age generation [Japan's "employment ice age" cohort, hit hardest by the 1990s-2000s job market collapse], only about 25% can actually use a PC
when we're 70-80
will we be able to keep up with whatever new tech comes out by then?
Even now, when it comes to smartphones, the "G-min" [regulars of the Nanademo Jikkyo G board] generation is probably already behind younger people
And as G-min get older, they'll keep drifting toward the "can't keep up" side too
But once you're a late-stage elderly person [75+], that kind of intellectual curiosity is just gone entirely
At the hospital there's a whole line of elderly people who can't even authenticate their My Number [Japan's national ID] card
Right next to them someone's telling the nurse some wild story like "lost my patient card, no insurance card, My Number? huh?"
The second it's a machine, they just have an allergic reaction to it, I guess
They probably don't even think for a second that tying up the staff means everyone else's food arrives later
Well if they genuinely can't order, what can you do
All you do is scan it with your phone and tap a few buttons?
It's not that they can't — they just won't
G-min [board regulars] be like: "Don't make customers pay for their own data charges! 😡"
No, not that
I mean the in-store tablets
As an example, take the tablets at Tenya [tempura chain]
On that tiny tablet the photos are printed ridiculously small
To the point where having a photo at all is pointless
And on top of that there's an "are you sure you want to start ordering?" button
plus a language selection screen, so you end up pressing about 4 buttons just to reach the menu
Tenya really ought to complain to the development company about that
but the higher-ups are probably elderly themselves and don't know any better, so it got approved as-is
Young people will just quietly order on the tablet anyway
If there's no sign saying "verbal orders not accepted,"
then staff should handle it
But that would cut the cost-saving benefit in half
Nobody's really in that situation
Well, if I'm being serious, you'd just order directly from staff
Dunno about Tenya, but if you can't read small text, why not just prepare for that [bring glasses or a magnifier]?
Why do you assume the world's supposed to accommodate you?
Recommended
Fried Foods
Grilled Foods
Rice Dishes
Chicken Dishes
Meat Dishes
Fish Dishes
Single Dishes
Side Snacks
Me: "…where is it" *wandering around the menu*
Exactly
If they can't design the menu properly
they should just include a full list of zoomable photos already
Like, say ordering became CUI [command-line interface] by default
and to order a beer you had to type in a command like this:
DIR>DRINKS> BEER.EXE /COUNT:1
And suppose all the young people understood it fine and kept up — wouldn't you be sitting there going "I have no idea what's going on"?
Uh, the AI will just auto-order for you, so…
Recent Windows
has basically thrown file operations over to PowerShell
and gutted the file explorer's features — freaked me out
You can't even search by attributes for hidden files anymore
The GUI design is just broken
Especially Matsuya [beef bowl chain] a few years back
It had hellishly bad usability
and became a huge topic of discussion because of it
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Touchscreen ordering spread rapidly at beef-bowl chains and family restaurants amid labor shortages and cost-cutting pressures, and because it’s such a familiar topic, opinions tend to split sharply. The thread’s debate largely breaks down into two camps: those sympathetic to physical and generational factors like presbyopia or unfamiliarity with devices, versus those who dismiss it as simply a lack of effort. What’s easy to overlook — as pointed out with the Tenya and Matsuya examples — is that flaws in the UI design itself, like tiny photos or too many steps to confirm an order, make things hard to use for everyone, not just the elderly. So while this looks like a simple “elderly vs. digital” clash, it’s worth keeping in mind that design failures are mixed in as well. It’s also worth noting that the original article’s street interviews reflect only a handful of voices and can’t be generalized as representative of elderly people as a whole.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nanademo Jikkyo G) thread “Elderly person: “Hey! Order!” Staff: “Please use the touchscreen.” Elderly person: “Like hell I’m doing something that much of a hassle!”.”
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