This screams marketing and engineering not being able to clearly communicate the problem statement. The problem statement was given to engineering as "How do we get a QR code inside of this handle thing?", when I am guessing their actual question was something like "How do we get the shopper to engage with our digital marketing efforts?"
I for sure know there are times when marketing has a clear thing of what they want, and you are not allowed to brainstorm the pro's and con's; but the con's seem to far outweigh the pro's in this specific strategy.
You're telling me that the shopper would have to contort their phone an unnaturally specific angle just to scan a QR code. Now the problem statement is back to the marketing team of "How do I tell the shopper to contort their phone at this angle?". I doubt that the marketing folks will like this being back on their lap.
I'm not sure if I missed something, but the top answer says:
The question is what happens here. The theory behind it is pretty easy and the good thing is, it explains what you have to do from any (meaningful) viewpoint. Let's use a simple cylinder graphic as example to explain what I mean
I'm pretty sure his example is at a contorted sideways angle because it demonstrates that you can line it up from any angle. The OP in the question could reasonably expect that the customer will be facing the handle from directly behind it when they push the trolley, and adjust his maths accordingly.
I do not know either. But lets assume that unknown you pointed at is true. What I do know is that if I look at the end result from a lay persons perspective, it will look "weird". Weird meaning it doesn't look like a normal QR code.
This will result in the same thing I initially mentioned in that marketing will have to communicate to the shopper that they can use this just like a normal QR code, which is a communication problem, not a tech problem.
Which is covered in the second paragraph of the article:
>This tale with its message of simplicity and thrift--not to mention a failure of common sense in a bureaucracy--floats around the Internet, hopping from in-box to in-box, and even surfaced during a 2002 episode of the West Wing. But, alas, it is just a myth.
And anyway (also covered in both the article and Snopes):
>Pencils may not have been the best choice anyway. The tips flaked and broke off, drifting in microgravity where they could potentially harm an astronaut or equipment.
And the article ends back at square 1, with a new, cheaper space pen which the Soviets also purchased because pencils are problematic in space:
>According to an Associated Press report from February 1968, NASA ordered 400 of Fisher's antigravity ballpoint pens for the Apollo program. A year later, the Soviet Union ordered 100 pens and 1,000 ink cartridges to use on their Soyuz space missions, said the United Press International. The AP later noted that both NASA and the Soviet space agency received the same 40 percent discount for buying their pens in bulk. They both paid $2.39 per pen instead of $3.98.
Because it's not truth that matters, it's truthiness. I don't need facts I can understand with my brain, I need facts that I can understand with my gut.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You are worried that you didn't get the karma points. I am glad that I was able to find this because someone reposted it, when the other was lost to oblivion.
Honestly, I don't care about karma at all. I was just curious when I saw the duplicate post. But now that I learned something can be reposted by adding # at the end of it, I think it needs to be fixed.
Entertaining the idea that QR codes should be deformable onto curvilinear surfaces, couldn't this be done by the QR reader, so that it's more "readable" to a person that it is a QR code?
I think in case of the bike frame the distortion is minor.
As I understand it's only there as proof of ownership for the people who really need to know on a hopefully unlikely occasion. So making it not too obvious might be a good idea when it comes to bike theft.
The QR-Code is meant to be easy to decode, adding compensation for non-planar surfaces might make it non-trivial to implement on embedded devices.
I think most QR code readers can handle reading at an angle, and calculate what angle they're at by the relative distances between the reference squares you'll see in three corners of the code. But telling the difference between a code that is angled on one dimension, and a code that is on a curve would be much more difficult to do reliably. in both cases, one dimension would be compressed, but in the case of the curve, the compression ration would vary.
As other comments note, this is missing the point a lot. QR codes are useful (or supposed to be) because they can be scanned from a different perspective. This solution requires a particular viewing angle and cannot cope with perspective shifting, making it useless in practice.
For this particular problem, attaching a QR code to a flat surface (if possible), or using "old fashioned" 1D barcodes (they probably carry enough information) is probably a better solution.
The general problem is designing a high density, 2D barcode system that can cope with perspective shifting with a cylindrical topology ; now that would be a neat mathematical trick!
The answers on that site are impressive from a helpful perspective.
sometimes the internet is full of cat gifs, and other times you get great minds in a sharing mood. This is what hn used to be when I started reading it.
Many of the comments on that one were negative too. What is interesting for one person is dumb for another anyway. For me, both the css-logos, and this QR code on a cylinder were nice to see from a theoretical point of view, but I don't see any practical use.
How hard is it to put a flat surface on the shopping cart? Why is the cart handle the best place to put the QR code? I am pretty sure the method will come in handy, and the way the solution is presented is awesome though.
It seems likely to me that the marketing people are working with a third party to do that actual construction and installation of the adverts. Their options for what physical shaped plastic the advert will go in are certainly limited and there may be no option for flat plastic, or the marketers may not realize the utility of such an option. But I would be very surprised if the marketers could specify a custom shape for the plastic.
I for sure know there are times when marketing has a clear thing of what they want, and you are not allowed to brainstorm the pro's and con's; but the con's seem to far outweigh the pro's in this specific strategy.
You're telling me that the shopper would have to contort their phone an unnaturally specific angle just to scan a QR code. Now the problem statement is back to the marketing team of "How do I tell the shopper to contort their phone at this angle?". I doubt that the marketing folks will like this being back on their lap.