[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?

[andymism]

> It could also be that they just aren't being implemented in a very intelligent way that makes them easy for people (or that the nerds are wrong–gasp! :)

I agree. They are not implemented in an intelligent way which makes them clumsy and painful to use.

My point about nerds is that us nerds are much more likely to live with pain to use fun, new tech. And as far as my experience from Google IO and my day-to-day work life, it doesn't seem to be the case here.

[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.