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Comment by deanebarker | Hacker News Reader

I feel like QR codes failed as a general UI tool. I get annoyed whenever I have to deal with one. They wee HUGE about 10 years ago. Now, not so much.

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I don’t know about other places, but they’re getting a lot of use in NYC right now as a method for viewing restaurant menus for outdoor dining.

Same in Germany. Also for payment with WeChat in China.

It is big for payments in India too.

They also inspired similar usage for looking up a profile/resource in Snapchat, Spotify, Venmo, etc.

Here (Austin) it’s used in movie theaters that had seat food ordering and I gotta say thee execution is flawless now that the camera has a built in QR.

I think if QR could start over again and have support from the camera without the user needing to figure an app to use/get etc. things might have been different.

I went to a restaurant the other day and it had one of those Coke Freestyle soda machines. There was a QR code on the screen which I scanned with my phone. This opened a website with drink choices. I put my cup under the dispenser and pushed the Barq's Root Beer button on the website on my phone which dispensed the drink from the machine.

I agreed with this take until 2020 and subsequent shutdowns of varying levels occurred in my U.S. state (Oregon) due to Covid-19. There are several eateries in my city utilizing them to great effect for menus and ordering as they have pivoted to outdoor and no-touch dining. And now that I have finally embraced them on this level, I notice and use them more: flyers around town, links to video tutorials on products I have purchased, local printed media, etc.

That depends on where you are. Here every billboard and its cousin have a QR code. So does the beer at the local gas station.

In Paris, most restaurants I visited recently have now done away with paper menus due to COVID and instead have QR codes on each table for the menus.

Also Japan, being one of the earliest adopters, is still big on QR codes.

And of course anything involving mobile and cryptocurrency transactions. And mobile payments in most of South and South East Asia.

How so? They are effectively a `<link/>` IRL. I would say the UX is pretty good. I don't know how much easier it can get than pulling out your camera then taking a picture using the camera app.

Their use has exploded since Covid in dense cities: I regularly have to use them to fill out pre-screening forms for facilities ("do you have symptoms X or have been in contact..."), see restaurant menus, pay bills (receipt at a restaurant has a QR code printed on the bottom, link to an online checkout on your phone, so you don't have to handle the POS machine), etc.

I love QR codes, mostly because they are in-app now, and not restricted to one app or one company. The convenience is too good.

I find them pretty easy to deal with now, they used to be annoying when you needed a specific app to scan them though.

Apple is coming out with it's own version soon that should be popular (at least with iOS people):

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/18/ios-14-leak-apple-qr-co...

Really? I think they are quite a success, especially for making payments easy, for example

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