Are QR codes redundant?

It seems only a short while since we first became aware of Quick Response (QR) codes. In fact, they have been around since 1994, and were originally created to enable the Japanese car manufacturing giant Toyota to track its vehicles during the manufacturing process. Now QR tags are just about everywhere you look, including advertising hoardings, buses and trains, magazines and even coins. They are essentially two dimensional bar codes that you can scan using your mobile device. The beauty (if you can call it that) of the QR tag is that it will quickly take your mobile device browser to a web site with no other effort than a button click. But as many users will tell you, scanning a QR code can be a little hit and miss.

QR codes have polarised the education community over their usefulness. Some argue that they have no real use beyond faddishness and 'wow' factor, whilst other educators are forging ahead, developing ideas for their pedagogical use. Slowly over the last few years, educational uses have begun to emerge, with some pedagogical applications already being tried out in authentic contexts. And yet, even while QR codes in education are still in their emergent state, questions are being asked about their future, and whether they have already become redundant.

Enter Blippar, an augmented reality tool that is hailed as the QR killer. Apparently it can do everything QR codes can do, but a whole lot more too. I first heard of Blippar when I picked up the November 2012 issue of the ShortList magazine, currently the most widely circulated free men's lifestyle magazine in the UK. The banner headline read 'Special Interactive Gaming Issue', which immediately piqued my interest. From cover to cover, the magazine features, articles, adverts and editorial are all marked with a small yellow 'Scan this page for more' symbol. Using the downloadable app from Blippar, readers can capture the image of the page, which takes them to an interactive website or gaming application. Blippar's managing director Jessica Butcher is fairly triumphant about what she naturally considers to be the advantages of Blippar over QR tags, declaring 'Rather than adding an ugly black and white pixellated box to an ad creative, Blippar can take the creative itself (the whole poster, a logo, the product itself) as the trigger for an interactive engagement.'

She has a point. We certainly wouldn't wish to ruin the aesthetics of adverts, would we? Seriously, I have always thought QR tags to be a little ugly in their appearance. The Blippar app is designed to recognise an image from almost any angle, at a distance, and even in poor light conditions, depending on the quality of your mobile device camera. This makes it a whole lot more reliable than scanning a QR tag, in my experience at least. Just like QR codes, Blippar can also recognise where the user is geographically through the GPS system on the mobile device they are using. For advertisers this is a distinct advantage, but I can also see many educational uses for these features.

Ultimately, those who are speculating on the future of paper based resources might like to consider Blippar and other similar data capture augmented reality tools. The future is likely to see a combination of paper based and e-books, or more likley a hybrid of paper based and AR enabled products, designed to function together with the user's mobile device, working in concert to provide students with interactive learning experiences wherever they are. Paper is not dead yet. It's just become enhanced.

Read the full article here: Can Blippar make QR codes redundant?

Image by Steve Wheeler


Are QR codes redundant? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.