

Why QR Codes Are Here To Stay - hamiltonchan
http://mashable.com/2011/08/26/qr-codes-viability/

======
pak
Here I'll give you a "real world hyperlink": print the damn URL in English so
that I can remember it if I don't have my phone handy. If you're running a
print ad you can afford a short snappy URL. Bonus, I can even use it on my
laptop that doesn't have a QR code app! Or any other browser for that matter!

The main problem I have with QR codes is that _humans can't read them_.
Therefore, they will be relegated forever to the sphere of computerish
heiroglyphics that normal people will always ignore, because they have no
obvious real world relevance. By way of contrast, most of the old EAN barcodes
have the number printed under them, so a human can see what they encode when
the barcode scanner breaks. QR codes, not so easy.

As suggested by another commenter, decide on some way of making the URL easy
to OCR, perhaps by surrounding it with targeting sentinels and using a
standard font. I mean, if Google Goggles can OCR text on a menu or poster in
real time... a QR code is just making things complicated.

Also, let me tell you this really great joke: CueCat.

~~~
masklinn
> Here I'll give you a "real world hyperlink": print the damn URL in English
> so that I can remember it if I don't have my phone handy.

Provide both then, because typing a URL is a pain on most mobiles, especially
urls more than 5 characters.

> If you're running a print ad you can afford a short snappy URL.

What sense would it make? You have an existing brand and an existing site, why
have to create a new brand and a new site just to link to that?

> Therefore, they will be relegated forever to the sphere of computerish
> heiroglyphics that normal people will always ignore, because they have no
> obvious real world relevance.

Japan and Korea demonstrate how absolutely incorrect you are.

> By way of contrast, most of the old EAN barcodes have the number printed
> under them, so a human can see what they encode when the barcode scanner
> breaks. QR codes, not so easy.

Wait that has no relevance whatsoever to the previous half of the paragraph,
you said "normal people" would always ignore QRCodes, but anyone can recognize
a barcode and knows (at least roughly) what it's about. QRCode _will_ reach
that ubiquity (as I mentioned, they already have in Japan and Korea for
instance), and by that time children will only have to learn about them once.

> I mean, if Google Goggles can OCR text on a menu or poster in real time... a
> QR code is just making things complicated.

Google Goggles can attempt to do that with all the power of Google behind it.
Just about any low-power device with a camera can recognize, read, fix (qrcode
embeds significant amount of redundancy for error recovery) and decode a
qrcode.

~~~
donohoe
I can't speak for Korea, but QR code usage in Japan seems to be on the decline
since 2009.

I disagree with many of your rebuttal points but sadly am on my phone so canny
properly argue why.

------
ethank
Mashable is kind of shameless with the "advertorials" lately aren't they?

I said about QR codes on Twitter a while ago:

"QR codes: like using a megaphone to seduce someone. The ugliest, stupidest,
most useless (and used less) tech in a while."

Background:

I worked in the music business for a while, and we always tried to be at the
forefront of trends. Because of the position we were in, where we were able to
market through technology with built-in lead generation that didn't cost us
anything (radio, television, PR, movies, etc), it was a good way to test a
technology with a lot of people early on.

QR codes were a flop. We tried them a lot
([http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/mobile-marketing-qr-
cod...](http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/mobile-marketing-qr-codes-
finally-close-reality/138154/)) and they never caught on. We'd have been
better off putting a short URL up.

They are inelegant, ugly, and scream of self-justification from people more
infatuated by technology they understand (badly) rather than use.

Reminds me of other "mobile marketing" trends, i.e.: ringback tones,
ringtones, video ringtones, and anything RIM tries with the music business
(i.e., thumbplay). And the Motorola Rokr.

~~~
artursapek
You think they're ugly? They've always reminded me of abstract expressionism,
I enjoy seeing them.

But I agree with you that they haven't seemed catch on, I think they're about
as enticing as a TV ad flashing a Facebook Page URL for its product or
marketing campaign during its last 3 seconds.

~~~
ethank
Would you rather compromise your design aesthetic with a URL (typeset even) or
a massive graphic? <http://whatever.com> or
[http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300...](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300&chl=http%3A//whatever.com&chld=H|0)

Your conversion will be crap regardless. You'll get more through organic
search.

~~~
artursapek
I think they each have their strenghts. A QR code allows immediacy and
loudness, it's more spontaneous and fun. There's a mystery to it _because_ it
can't be read by humans. A URL can be understood and remembered. It depends on
what you're trying to do with the design. I wouldn't say a QR code is a
substitute for a URL, it's more of an alternative. And it can be more than a
URL.

------
callmeed
_... says the CEO of a QR code startup._

I've been anti-QR code for a while—partly just because I like playing devil's
advocate—but mainly because I see little benefit and a lot of friction to use
"in the real world"

Now, please, someone on HN _who isn't a QR-preneur_ tell me a story of how a
QR code in the wild made your life better ...

~~~
andymism
This was a timely article as I recently had a fun time playing devil's
advocate regarding QR codes in a friend's start up idea. She insists that they
are a useful, convenient, and a big trend. I countered that they require too
much effort and precision to be mainstream in their current incarnation. While
the promised convenience sounds great (which was basically her argument), the
current implementation does not live up to that promise.

While in Las Vegas, recently, she mentioned that she went to an art gallery
that had QR codes on the placards for paintings that were for sale. One could
scan the code and be taken to the gallery's website where you could then
purchase a print. Prints cost in the range of a few hundred to a few thousand
dollars. __Who goes to an art gallery in Las Vegas to walk out with a few
bookmarks so they can spend a thousand dollars at home? __It's a use case with
lots of cool factor and wouldn't-it-be-awesome-if's, but that does not pan out
with real, normal humans.

I was at Google IO this past May with 5,000 other nerds. I spent much of the
time walking around, talking to people, and figuring out whose brain I wanted
to pick further. On our admission badge was a QR code that attendees could
opt-in to having all your contact information on using a checkbox on the
Google IO registration page. I had opted in for this. What do you think the
primary method of exchanging contact info was that weekend?

You guessed it.

 __Business cards __. Only one person asked to scan my QR code, but this was
after he asked for my business card first (I ran out). The rest of time, I
logged email addresses and names in my phone or wrote my name and email on a
piece of paper.

QR codes are a flop. I know this because I was in a room with 5,000 fellow
nerds for a weekend, in 2011, and almost none of us cared to use it.

How can you be the hot new tech if the nerds don't care to use you?

~~~
pagekalisedown
I've notice I've been using my business cards less and less over the years.
Nowadays, it's more common for me to have the other people simply type-in
their information directly into my iPhone.

------
artursapek
Ever since I started seeing QR codes I, admittedly with a lack of interest
anyway, just assumed that the iPhone/Android/Blackberry cameras all
automatically detect the code and act on it in the built-in camera app, since
it seemed like such a standard. It was disappointing to learn that wasn't
really the case, and there's a bunch of competing third-party apps for doing
it. It's amazing that it's gotten as far as it has without any large companies
pushing it (that I'm aware of).

edit-

I should also add, I've never seen a person scanning one.

~~~
masklinn
> It's amazing that it's gotten as far as it has without any large companies
> pushing it (that I'm aware of).

It's not being pushed much _in the US_. It's been created by a subsidiary of
Toyota and is ubiquitous in Japan. It's also widely used in South Korea and
(at the very least) Netherlands. I don't think there's any phone there which
lacks native QRCode support in japan, and just about any poster has a QRCode
on it linking to the relevant page.

~~~
rickmb
> widely used in [...] Netherlands

No it isn't. It's widely pushed, for a value of "widely" that comes down to
"you're likely to spot a few". Nobody actually uses them on the consumer end.

------
franze
_Disclaimer: I'm a guy who wrote a QR-URL-shortener during a sabbatical on a
beach in mexico, it was awesome_

i run the QR-URL-shortener <http://miniqr.com/> (which we had way before
goo.gl and bit.ly implemented this as a feature) - and also offer a webcam
based QR code reader <http://miniqr.com/reader.php> \- and after 2 years of
watching the data and talking with QR code creators and users

\- QR-codes fullfil a need of the publishers: making the conversions from
print (magazines, poster, ...) campaigns trackable

\- QR-codes in print do not fullfil a need of the user

\- a kind of QR codes which get repeated onine views are links to the android
app store and some v-cards (addresses + phone numbers)

so, desktop to mobile, yes kinda, print to mobile, i have my doubts.

so yeah, anyways: <http://miniqr.com> is for sale (and cheap) i will focus my
energies elsewhere

------
gerggerg
Why QR codes shouldn't be trusted for anything but shipping labels:

-

Say you bank at BofA. On the door of the branch you go to is a sticker that
says "Bank online, it's easier" and it has a QR code for you to conveniently
scan to access their website. Now say someone came along and put a sticker,
the exact size of the QR code, over the QR code of a QR code of a malicious
url. Not only do you have no way of verifying the url, but it would even be
hard for employees of the bank to notice the change.

You could print 1000 of these stickers and place them on bank doors and ATMs
all throughout New York City and I bet you at least 10% would never get taken
down.

The malicious url could then easily mimic real sign in screens to harvest
credentials, and even have a seemingly legit url.

The problem with QR codes is you have to place almost all your trust in them
as they're hard for anyone to verify. When shipping packages, who cares? Whose
going to try to change a shipping label while in transit. But trusting your
internet browsing to some garble of black squares seems like a huge security
flaw.

~~~
icebraining
It's essentially the same as trusting a link from a Wiki. Would I trust it to
access my bank? No, of course not, I don't even trust Google for that. But
banks are a very special case; most websites don't require nearly that trust.

~~~
gerggerg
Anyone can put a QR code sticker on anything that leads to anywhere. It's
physical world linkjacking. As QR codes become more popular I wouldn't be
surprised if the fake ones became overwhelming.

~~~
icebraining
If you replace "QR code sticker" with "link", the first phrase applies to
Wikipedia. Yet, it works.

------
LeafStorm
The advantage QR codes have over OCR for loading hyperlinks is that QR-codes
are high-contrast, machine-readable, high-density, square (so they are
guaranteed to fit in a viewfinder) and have error correction built in. OCR, on
the other hand, requires that a (probably cheap) mobile phone camera be able
to differentiate l from 1, O from 0, : from ;, and so on, no matter what font
the designer chooses.

Requiring a "sane" font, size, color, and background color for OCR would not
advance readability enough, and it would break the design even more than
having a QR code. And even that won't solve the problems of squareness, byte
density, and error correction. (Though the obvious solution is "type the URL
in whatever font you want and put the QR code next to it.")

And a major advantage QR codes have over competitors in the field is that they
are very recognizable, with the three position squares in the corners and the
smaller alignment square in the opposite corner.

------
buro9
A few simple thoughts about QR codes.

NFC fails on some advertising... advertising on a metro system? Your advert is
likely to be the other side of some high voltage train tracks, no-one could
scan the NFC, but people can still scan a QR code from that distance.

For transactions printed QR codes are a poor choice. A lot of the time
transactions want to prove that you are there performing the transaction. As
an example, think of payments and cardholder-not-present... the magnetic
stripe and the chip on a debit card both hold more information (just a few
extra bytes) than the 16-digit number printed on a card. It is possible to
prove the debit card (and implicitly 'you') were there.

With QR codes someone is able to take a photo of a QR code and then scan it
again else where. It's very hard to prove you were there for the sake of a
transaction. Ignoring payments, think FourSquare check-ins that are tied to
promotions where check-ins are done via QR scanning at a café, you're giving
away a deal based on something you cannot prove and is open to fraud.

QR codes do help with transactions that don't require security, and with
storing a fair amount of info in a dense area. Think vcards stored in a QR
code on badges in a conference, or a bicycle with security QR stickers
declaring ownership located in places where a bike mechanic would find them
(under innertube on wheel rim, inside handlebars)... the ubiquity of QR
readers (pretty much all smart phones) makes them ideal for communicating a
small chunk of data to anyone and not requiring specialist equipment to read
that data.

Where QR codes have weaknesses are related to storage of hidden data, and
different values per instance of a code. Financial transactions depend on this
to prove cardholder is present, and stock management depends on this to
accurately count stock.

QR codes have their place (advertising, conference badges, tagging things,
small chunks of dense data), and NFC has it's place (transactions, stock
management). Sometimes these use cases overlap (conference badges) but mostly
they do not.

------
noonespecial
QR codes also happen to be a fantastic way for devices to communicate when
their primary peripherals happen to be cameras and screens. Both are now
nearly ubiquitous on all phones and increasing in quality at a ridiculous
rate.

I do not want to do a pairing dance to send you a link on my phone. Point a
camera at a screen with a QR code, bam.

QR codes or something like them is a key step in augmented reality based on
machine vision. May as well stick with what we've got(1). It seems to work.

(1) Unless its covered by a bunch of brain-dead "gif"-like patents in which
case I suggest a grid of Pink Hearts, Yellow Moons, Orange Stars, Green
Clovers, and Blue Diamonds. I've heard there's prior art for that scheme.

------
grimen
The real thing will be image scanning and nothing else. I'll post a video soon
here on HN to prove that images are way better "barcodes" than both 1D and
2D/QR barcodes.

What I can say now is: 1\. QR codes don't work on distances - state of the art
image algoritms do. 2\. QR codes mess with the brand appearance - basically
H&M don't want a QR code all over an ad. 3\. QR codes fail when there's
reflection, dark dirt, and very skewed camera - state of the art image
algoritms don't. ...

I wish I could post our video today to prove how much more convenient image
scanning is - and what we use it for - for non-believers, but I have to wait a
few weeks. Until then check YouTube.

~~~
kalleboo
They've been doing the image scanning thing a bit in Sweden, where you can
take pictures of bus stop ads and be taken to a site. The problem as I see it
is that it needs a database connection, which means

* You need a network connection for it to work, so it won't work everywhere (subway ads)

* Since there's a network service involved, it can't be an open standard, and users will need 20 different apps installed for all the different service providers, and figure out just what app to use for this damn ad.

* Due to the network roundtrip, you don't have instant feedback that the scan worked, which is a problem since

* Performance is poor in the dark.

QR codes also solve the problem of telling people that there's something
actually there to scan.

~~~
grimen
1) Network works well in metro for me mostly, though it's a valid point that
it might suffer here and there. But metros is just a smal fraction of the
possabiities we - and retailers we talked with - see.

2) It won't be 20 apps, becuase there are only a few companies in the world
that has sophisticated algorithms enough - many algorithms you can read about
on the web are not realiable enough. So far no one has done a consumer product
but hundreds of QR-based apps, I would say that this say a bit how hard it is.
Anyone can craete a QR app based on some open-source libs.

3) Well, our demos show something else - ~1-2 seconds.

4) Flash. And scenario for scanning _stuff_ in night dark is...not really a
descent secenario anyway if it's that dark people have hard to see.

5) That's an assumption based on today's reality, because no viable succeedors
are available yet that do more valuable things. Yet I haven't heard of anyone
using QR codes more than once or twice for fun even though it been "hot" since
for half a decade or more.

------
ansy
I think one of the factors working against the QR code is it does not have a
recognizable uniform function. The code can contain an text or data in any
number of formats which isn't apparent to the naked eye. The text might be a
URL, or it might be a poem, or it could be a vCard.

This causes consumer confusion. It's almost like we need standard contextual
decorations around the QR codes to hint at the contents. Like how http, www,
and underlining tell people a string of text is a web URL.

Or maybe just new, incompatible subsets of QR codes that have an unmistakable
appearance and purpose. Sometimes connectors both physical and virtual are
designed on purpose to be incompatible even though technically it's all just
hollow tubes or copper wires.

I would maybe liken QR codes to SGML. We need something more like HTML.
Limited but with a standard interpretation that everyone can understand.

~~~
LeafStorm
Assuming you could design icons that appear mostly black to the reader, you
could replace the four black pixels in one of the position patterns with an
icon (globe for hyperlink, business card for contact info...)

------
kemayo
I actually found a fun and sensible use of QR codes last month. I was at City
Museum [1], which is sort of like a giant not-very-safe jungle gym for adults,
and I noticed that they had some QR codes laminated and stuck in hard-to-find
places. I scanned one, and it gave me some bonus information about the area
I'd found it in (photos of them lifting the world's largest pencil into the
building, I think).

That's actually helpful. Navigating to a sub-page on their website directly,
relevant to the physical space I found the code in.

By contrast, the average use of QR codes in print appears to be to make me not
have to remember a short top-level URL like "nytimes.com" which I could have
typed in easily anyway.

1: <http://www.citymuseum.org/>

------
jmesserly
Here's what I don't get about QR codes: why not just use URLs and OCR them?
OCR seems to be pretty good these days, and you could always print the URL
with a font of your choice (e.g. pick something easy to OCR).

And you get this cool feature ... humans can read them, too.

~~~
icebraining
OCRing is much more difficult to get right; QR Codes are not only easier to
scan, but they have plenty of error correction.

------
hxf148
QR codes are apart of our strategy at Infostripe. For free (in beta) you get a
web app designed to connect everything about your presence online, a virtual
business card. Put the generated QR code on your business card, badge or home
screen and bring it all together. It's worth a look. <http://infostripe.com>

We really like QR codes and hope for a day when smartphone software gets built
in scanning and seeking.

------
cormullion
Another issue is the presence of competing technologies: I hadn't heard of
Microsoft Tag before (the invisible elephant in the room?), but the presence
of rival technologies might slow down adoption. Soon packaging is going to be
covered with tags, bar codes, QR codes, etc.

------
luminarious
Please, can someone give a good reason why the bundled camera apps are not
supporting QR codes? For an average user, it would be the easiest option to
just use the camera on the phone. Less friction and so on.

------
mikeknoop
QR-codes can act as a fallback when NFC isn't available on the device.

------
softbuilder
Viva la Cue Cat!

------
joblessjunkie
I'll scan that QR code from your poster right after I get done opening this
unsolicited Excel spreadsheet you emailed to me.

