The QR code was created in 1994 by a Japanese company, has been around almost as long as me, and I have a love/hate relationship with it. Never understood, nor used frequently, it slowly fell into obscurity. If only it had the aesthetic styling of the barcode we may have loved it just a little bit more almost 30 years ago.
But then, all of a sudden, someone started using it again and in a Comic Sans-style resurgence it began showing up almost everywhere. From vans and lorries, down to tiny versions on flyers and posters. I even remember going to watch Cardiff Blues play and their sponsor had a huge one on the side of the stands. Now everyone’s favourite buzzword and whenever I talk about modern marketing campaigns, it’s a sure-fire bet that someone will utter the words “maybe we should have a QR code”. We’d just got to a state of play where the QR code might fall back into obscurity for its better cousin, NFC but…
COVID-19 and a global pandemic hit
It’s still weird to me, 2 years after the height of the pandemic, to be writing about the after-effects of what most of the population thought would be a couple of weeks indoors and we’d all go back to normal. But that wasn’t to be, social distancing and contactless payments became the thing to do, and reducing contact with whatever you could became standard.
Getting people to information quickly and giving customers and the general public a quick way to access menus, checking into venues, or other essential parts of human life got people thinking. How do we help people access information and reduce physical touching? For some reason, the QR code was deemed appropriate and it was plastered everywhere.
The COVID pandemic led to what seemed like a rise in the use of QR codes, simply because everyone saw them more often or had to use them at some point but even then there was still a fallback and I even found it easier and quicker to enter the URL into a mobile browser. It seemed like QR codes were used more but it’s simply because they were around more.
Problems with QR codes
The first problem I saw when people started using the QR code is the immediate mental block people have around it, it’s why they never caught on in the first place, there’s a learning curve to them. Albeit not a steep one, but there’s still some minimal training that needs to be done in order to get people to use them. The second problem is that action from the user is required, although most modern phones have a built-in QR code reader, they aren’t usually publicised that well and most people will still download an app even if they aren’t required anymore.
The third problem, which for me is the biggest, I witnessed so many people physically grabbing the piece of paper, grabbing the information leaflet, or holding the plaque on the table so they could scan things with their camera. I even had to do it myself, when I wanted to enter a restaurant in a windy location and they had printed out the QR code on a poster that was flapping around.
Better things to use have, and do exist, and sometimes simpler is usually the easier option.
What should we have done instead?
The QR code didn’t catch on because there have always been better alternatives, barcodes have been used with roaring success on products, NFC has been rolled out in bank cards and is natively on phones (with much easier access) and everybody and their dog has their own website URL these days. Even if they don’t, bitly, the massively popular URL shortener, is still a much better decision. I will admit that it’s easy to judge now it has been done and decisions are made in the heat of the moment.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with QR codes much like I don’t dislike Comic Sans – I think both things are useful and when used correctly and are very good at their jobs. But dishing them out to the general public and putting the onus on them to download an app, scan the code, and then fill out information – not good.
The modern era is full of “touch points” to the digital world, with most people having you download an app, or visit their social media, and through the pandemic ordering online but using the QR code was a misstep in judgment. I understand the reasoning behind it, but a simple short URL would have been much easier to use and understand.
As they say, hindsight is a wonderful thing and I am sure that most people would do things differently now they know the outcomes. I guess we will just need to wait until the next pandemic.