Seems like QR codes have been getting a really bad wrap recently. With the release of findings that only a fraction of the worldwide population even knows what a QR code is followed by the reports of “infected” codes, it may be that our favorite technological underdog has an even more uncertain future.
We should remind ourselves that new mobile technologies take a tortuously long time to permeate a significant percentage of the population. This rings especially true in the US where mobile technology adoption seems no faster than a crawl. If you look at the numbers, smartphone sales only accounted for 23.4% of all mobile phone sales in the first quarter of this year. This means that the majority of phones being sold still don’t even have the opportunity to utilize QR codes.
Don’t pass judgement on QR codes just yet. The technology is still young and not yet widely available. There are a bunch of other things that we can do help it along:
Better Advocacy
QR codes have only really been trickling into the public eye. Sure, it’s been growing fast but really only in certain areas. The biggest areas of QR use are websites (which seems contradictory), product packaging and publications (magazines, newspapers). There are a million on ways to use QR codes, let’s get creative.
Better Awareness
Advertisers are doing a piss-poor job of educating the public on how to use a QR code. I personally find it annoying and sometimes offensive when I see a graphic attempting to explain how to use that specific code, but I deal with it because the rest of the world doesn’t share the same knowledge. We need to hold the world’s hand until it catches on.
Better Tools
There are tons of QR generators and tracking tools out there, most of them being clones of each other. That’s lame and downright incestuous. Not to mention none of them address the fact QR codes are physically printed. All of the codes I’ve ever generated I’ve had to pull into Illustrator because I’m only given a tiny little PNG at web-standard resolution. Not cool.
Let’s get our act together.
One ray of hope is Phenomblue who is currently developing a QR generator, Open QR, that generates vector image QR codes, for quick and easy sizing, along with the standard traffic analytics offering. It’s not yet publicly available but, you can sign up for the beta on the Open QR website.
If we want this technology to survive and grow we need to do a better job at cultivating it.
