Hacker News Reader

Comment by datavirtue | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, QR code menus are superior, until you have to use them. They never have instructions and every device does it differently and not in obvious ways. The only instructions you get from a stressed out server is "just scan it." Ok, how?

This is a great way of making tech look stupid to luddites and it reminds me of modern UX trends that expect people to just know how to do some mysterious thing--and developers rely on most users assuming they are the stupid ones because they don't know how to use an app's hidden functionality. Not. Accessible.

Every restaurant used to have the same UX, now they are all different. Stupid.

View on HN

I don't understand the "now they're all different" facet of this. In my experience during the pandemic, they are all the same, just in a way that is not discoverable, as you point out. But after the first time I realized I just needed to open my camera app to make it work, it became a really nice experience. There is a balance here - discoverability is good until it becomes clutter because nobody needs to discover it anymore because it is commonplace, and symmetrically a mechanism that is quick and easy but lacks discoverability is bad until it becomes commonplace and second nature. A great example of this is the mechanisms to open camera apps on phones (which this QR menu thing builds on!): there is no way to discover that I need to press my power button twice to open my camera, but once I know this and it is second nature, there is absolutely no better way to accomplish that task.

It's also super fun to download a 45mb menu on your cellular data plan every time you want to look at the menu.

Exciting positive answers to this problem would be:

1) All such restaurants offering free open wifi + 2) A commercialized system that hosts the menu PDFs on tiny https servers on the restaurant's wifi router and serves them locally (potentially avoiding issues with far-away outages and also saving on the internet bandwidth for the common case).

Now I have to connect to their wifi before I can see the menu? And the restaurant is expected to maintain a menu server? What is MORE practical about this?

No, you can use your cellular connection all you want. It'll just eat your data. If you want to trade a little effort for a little data saving, that option is open to you.

That depends on whether the @ff317's solution (2) also includes availability over the internet.

They can change prices and/or update the menu at any time and they avoid printing, storing, handing out, collecting, and cleaning the physical menus.

An appliance menu server would cost practically nothing if they're already offering Wi-Fi or use electronic POS/ordering systems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com