Observations about QR codes

Thinking About Usability

QR codes are quite handy for quickly sharing physically relevant information. For example, restaurant menus, instruction manuals, etc.

The only problem, is that if the QR code is in a slightly inconvenient spot, it’s almost always faster to just use duckduckgo or google to search for what the QR code is supposed to provide.

Words regurgitated in a cave man like fashion into a search engine will either bring you to the QR code’s url, or a better source to the same information.

Very rarely there are things that a search engine can’t find and put into the first slot. In this case, the QR code has a purpose.

Maybe QR codes should just link to a well chosen search for the thing the QR code is trying to show, that way when the url the QR code stored becomes invalid, it doesn’t matter because the search engine automatically provides alternatives.

But that’s just how I think, nobody has to agree.