Japan has been using QR codes respectfully, and usefully, for years now.
People don't scan them in the US because most people don't seem to have a clue what they are. If we spend any freaking time educating the public about what they are and how to use them ( and stopped using those damn proprietary variants) then we'd see a lot of value come out of them.
You don't like QR codes? Fine, then give me some %#$%@$ alternative that allows me to get people from the print version of my stuff to the online version without them having to type in some long string of characters on a weeeee little phone keyboard that everyone makes typos on constantly.
Until someone comes up with a better alternative, maybe we should stop railing against them and start learning how to use them intelligently and respectfully, while making it easy for our audience to consume them.
Telling a spectacular story, as the comic suggests, wouldn't get people to my site nearly as well as a button on the paper that they could reach down and push.
QR codes aren't doing a great job of getting people their either, because instead of educating people about how useful they are and what to do with them, we're letting marketers use them without a freaking clue, while the clueful sit around bitching about them without offering any good alternative.
"If we spend any freaking time educating the public about what they are and how to use them"
The problem is that people will not learn a new technology to engage with an ad.
If Facebook has been started with a ton brands and no people, and the advertisers kept putting 'hey like us on facebook!' in their ads, no one would have ever joined Facebook. Instead brands came to Facebook because that's what people were already using.
If there was some utility to QR codes that got people using them outside of ads, then they might also work on ads. But right now, ads are basically the only place they appear, so no one is going to go through the effort to learn about them.
> then give me some %#$%@$ alternative that allows me to get people from the print version of my stuff to the online version
I think a plain URL printed with some agreed OCR-friendly font would do the job much better than the ugly, unfriendly, redundant and unintuitive QR bars.
I think the problem is that for people that have problems navigating the web to start with, using QR codes will be tougher than just suing the search bar on their iPhone etc
People don't scan them in the US because most people don't seem to have a clue what they are. If we spend any freaking time educating the public about what they are and how to use them ( and stopped using those damn proprietary variants) then we'd see a lot of value come out of them.
You don't like QR codes? Fine, then give me some %#$%@$ alternative that allows me to get people from the print version of my stuff to the online version without them having to type in some long string of characters on a weeeee little phone keyboard that everyone makes typos on constantly.
Until someone comes up with a better alternative, maybe we should stop railing against them and start learning how to use them intelligently and respectfully, while making it easy for our audience to consume them.
Telling a spectacular story, as the comic suggests, wouldn't get people to my site nearly as well as a button on the paper that they could reach down and push.
QR codes aren't doing a great job of getting people their either, because instead of educating people about how useful they are and what to do with them, we're letting marketers use them without a freaking clue, while the clueful sit around bitching about them without offering any good alternative.