QR Codes - Looking for its Problem

QR codes, the ugly square barcodes meant to let you pull up lengthy info quickly on your mobile device, aren’t doing too well. In the survey that Sean Cummings did, only 5% of the people he talked to were able to decipher a QR code and get the information, and it took them an average of 47 seconds to do so.

I see three good reasons why this is the case.

It’s not obvious to most people what they are and how they should use them.

As shown in the survey above, people don’t quite know what to make of those little squares of noise when they see them on advertisements. There isn’t typically an icon or line of text that says “scan me with your phone”. ¹ It entirely relies on someone explaining to you what it is at some point and what you’re supposed to do with it, which is compounded by the fact that each phone has a different process for getting the app to scan it. At least with a URL it’s fairly obvious what you can do with it.

Scanning software isn’t on mobile devices by default, and the software isn’t fast enough to make the use of QR codes much more efficient than firing up the browser and typing in the URL word by word.

“Just scan the code with your phone.”
“OK, how do I do that?”
“Well, it’s quite simple. If you have an iPhone, go to the App Store, search for ‘QR code’ and look for something that scans QR codes. Install that app, then open it up and wait for it to load, point it at the code, then scan it. If you have an Android phone, go to the Android mar-“
“That’s OK, I just typed the URL into the web browser.”
“Oh, OK.”

Nobody is going to use something that takes more effort to use than a URL if the entire point is to simplify the process.

There’s little realistic incentive to use them.

Oh, look, I can go to Subway’s website and read details on a promotion that they just explained in this poster. Wooo.

To make a QR code work, you have to give them something they want to look up, and it has to be more convenient to use the code. The only use case I’ve found to make this work is with phone apps. You’re browsing the web on a PC, you see an app you want on your phone. The URL is a billion characters long, but this site has a code that you can scan to take you right to the app install page on the phone. It does work well in that scenario, but only because I couldn’t type in a simple URL like “thisapp.appstore.com” into the device. In most cases a nice, short URL - even a bit.ly link - will be much more efficient than a QR code.

Now, with all that being said, I think it’s still possible to make them work, but this has to happen:

• QR scanners need to be integrated to OS camera apps on smartphones - not optional applications that have to be found and opened with a slower process.

• QR codes need to be used more effectively. Give people a good reason to use them - making a complicated task that they want to do simple - and explain how people are supposed to use them. If the camera apps are able to scan them, just say “Take a picture with your phone:” right next to the code.

Unfortunately, I don’t see Apple caring enough about QR codes to do the former, and without iOS Camera app support QR codes will just be too much of a pain to use.