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Comment by paul9290 | Hacker News Reader

Are people using QR codes frequently here in the states or elsewhere?

To me I see them everywhere, but curiously most phones don't have them built into their camera apps (iPhone's camera doesn't have built in scanner) or have some quick an easy way to scan QR codes.

Rather you have to download an app and then later find that app, then fidget a bit too much to get the app to read the code.

Not the greatest user experience and I have found it frustrating!

What advances have been made and or are being made to make QR code scanning quick and painless?

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http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/ SCNR

But on a more serious note google now/the camera search in android has QR code support integrated and you don't necessarily have to install additional applications.

Unfortunately they removed Search with camera in a recent update, hopefully they will add it back in.

The scanner app for Android is sitting between 50M and 100M installs:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.zxi...

I'm not sure about the experience on other platforms, but that particular app scans so well and easily, it'll often grab the code before you even really begin to purposefully line up the camera. Scanning the little guys has become second nature to me, at least. It is only a pity they aren't used in more novel ways, because seriously, we can do better than having one right next to a 10-character URL that I could type just as easily.

Also, I recall seeing them displayed and used far more often on my last trip to Japan. I'm guessing that many of the phones there must have the scanner installed by default, or the hands-off, self-serve approach is somehow appealing to the 倭-way.

Reading QRs is very straight-forward on Windows Phone (is integrated on the OS and it's a two-tap access from anywhere in the system). As most WP-centric blogs link to apps through QRs that link you straight to the in-phone store, I use it quite a bit.

But of course I wouldn't generally bother to use it on advertising.

I see them all the time on the London Underground, especially in stations without wi-fi, which smacks me as especially odd. I've never tried to scan the code (it's perhaps a few inches across on the other side of the track) but I can't imagine it contains everything it needs to show the user something interesting.

Nobody uses QR codes except maybe in shipping & receiving industries.

I wish people would just let it die.

In my experience, most people don't even know what they are, much less know how to use them. The ads they are used in rarely give the user a reason to engage, so users also don't care.

The biggest problem I have with them is that they are a machine code representation of data, usually a URL, but almost nobody ever prints the human representation of that data. Makes as much sense as printing traditional UPC codes on the media. If marketers would place the short URL that the code points to, people might understand that that's where the code will take them, and they also then have the option of opening their browser and entering it by hand.

I still think that's unlikely to happen, of course, given how poorly marketers engage people, but at least it's no longer just machine code.

I think the URL the QR code references typically has some token in it that can be used in server analytic to tell which location the code was scanned at. You could reasonably get a person to type in the URL "BurtsApples.com", but not so easily "BurtsApples.com?refid=supermarket98".

Not really. I think marketers like the concept of being able to close the loop on display advertising, like posters and store shelves, but it's pretty infrequently used. The friction of it not being native to any OS is pretty high.

I was in a meeting where a marketing group wanted to implement it all over the place. I shut it down by going around the office and asking if anyone in the office even a) knew what it was, and b) had ever used it. About 1/4 had heard about it, but nobody had a clear understanding of how to use it or had ever actually scanned one.

We had them as address book entries on the back of people's badges at an O'Reilly conference I was just at. I saw people using them and I took one person's details in this way too. If I had to guess though, < 10% of people were using them.

Japan uses them at airport check ins for their ticketing.

If it's anything like Australia, they're not using QR codes, but some other kind of 2D barcode.

2D barcodes are really useful for things like that (and part identification in manufacturing, etc.), but pretty silly on advertising.

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