I have had a couple of internal discussions around the area of barcodes and NFC. At the same time I wanted to create an external post for developers, so here goes.
Mobile Codes Consortium is the initiative where companies like Deutsche Telekom, HP, Nokia, Qualcomm and Telefonica O2 are trying to develop a common, open standard for barcodes that can be scanned by the mobile camera. Laudible, since there are at least eight variants of mobile barcodes in the West, none with significant traction there outside of individual media players.
In Japan, the story is another one. NTT DoCoMo had a dominant place on the market, went for QR-codes, embedded the barcode solution on its phones and voila, de facto. Beetags have been used in Asia since 2003 for advertisments and game and ringtone downloads.
Anyway, back to the West. First you have to get a Java app on the phone, then the app has to do a good enough job of using the camera API to capture the code. For many phones, that is a low resolution capture which is the reason why there are specialized 2D barcodes for mobile in the first place. RealEyes3D have image intensification as one of their specializations and are among the few to try and tackle the standard 1D barcodes used almost universally in retail, with a mobile camera.
OK, let's say you have installed a barcode reader on your mobile. What's the user experience like? Here's the use case for an app that I just tried:
- Start application.
- Take photo of tag
- Say 'yes' to "allow application to use camera?"
- Click 'web' for taken photo
- Say 'yes' to "allow application to access web?"
- View result (web page, video)
Now significant content should be less than 3 clicks deep into a mobile website... so it could be quicker to bookmark the site and click in manually. I hope you get the point.
There are other applications that detect the tag, take the photo automatically without asking and access the web without asking you. If you really want that.
And yes, as a pioneer I know how to give the application "permission always" to eliminate step 5 for example, but most people don't. So give a celebrity a configured phone, tell them what do do and you can get rave reviews. But, how do you get the configured phone in the hands of everyone else?
Mobile barcodes are enablers, they can (at best) help you to better a user experience, but it is often possible to make something fly and get stuck into both the user experience and business model with basic means. Evolve what works already well - somethng I have seen from hundreds of successful applications. For example, can the same thing be done with physical entry of codes?
An example of a 'basic' tagging service is yellowarrow.net, an art project which has flourished in New York and spread globally. Plain old paper stickers and SMS. If the organisers said they were ready to go for barcodes in a phase 2, I think I would believe them.
Oh, yes. The picture at the beginning of this post? That’s me in QR code.
Try using e.g, http://www.beetagg.com/downloadreader/ if you want to take the next step. This reader copes with 3 sorts of barcodes.
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The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author, and in no way represent Ericsson AB's official or implied position on the issues discussed.
