The Once and Future Code: Waxing Poetic About the Lowly QR
As I registered my new washer and downloaded its Bluetooth controller app via a scan of the QR code on the front, I mused about how this funky, information-dense, patterned box has evolved from a fringe tool of industry and marketers to its rebirth as the easiest way for consumers to get information on the go.
If you’re not a wonk about obscure technology, and don’t already know it, here’s the origin story for this phoenix:
- 1994: Invented by Masahiro Hara at Toyota subsidiary, Denso Wave, to track auto parts. Useful, but not very cool.
- 2000s: Consumers began seeing codes in magazines and on products. Marketers thought they were revolutionary and cool (I was one). Regular people thought they were weird and cumbersome (you needed special software to read the codes).
- 2017: Apple thought we weren’t giving the little QR code enough love, so they integrated native scanning of codes into the iOS camera app. Android followed. Yay! No more special apps to install!
- 2020-2022: QR codes got their groove back by not being touchy-feely. It was the pandemic, and nobody wanted to touch anything, so we got QR-a-fied restaurant menus, check-ins, museum audio tours, and vaccine passports. It was adoption by necessity.
- 2023-2025: Usage moved into payments with everything from TV ads to person-to-person payments (here’s looking at you, Venmo!)
- Over 2.9 billion people worldwide are expected to have used QR codes by 2025, and 1 trillion codes were expected to be scanned worldwide.
- 73% of Gen Z prefer scanning a QR code over typing a URL, and 66% of Millennials scanned one in the last 30 days. Nobody’s saying what Gen X thinks, so it seems, once again, the “forgotten generation” has been left out. We’ll get over it.
- In healthcare, 75% of US hospitals use QR-coded wristbands for patients, and medication errors have been reduced by up to 86% when QR code verification is used.
- Consumer familiarity has risen to such a degree that the retail industry decided to sunset the 50-year-old linear UPC and replace it with the QR code by 2027. The King is dead. Long live the King!
As positive as it is, that’s last year’s news. Now, even AI wants to cozy up to the QR. I don’t claim to understand it all yet, but the possibilities are exciting:- Generative AI: Marketers are using Generative AI models to blend QR codes into artwork, where the underlying data becomes part of the visual. It’s code as composition – and it’s still scannable. The result is these QR artworks see 80% higher scan rates than the oh-so-last-year black and white 2d codes. (Coca-Cola has tried this)
- Augmented Reality: AR experiences are being embedded into a mobile browser and reached by scanning QR codes at retail to allow 3d models to be overlaid on the customer via their phone camera (Sephora and Nike have experimented with the technology)
- Context Aware Experiences: New AI-backend software linked to a QR scan can provide context-aware customer experiences, like showing you a breakfast menu if you arrive at a restaurant in the morning vs later in the day. Sadly, this does not answer my desire to have breakfast as an option at any time of the day.
The QR code has risen from its ashes, and thanks to the new partnership with AI, it looks to have a long, interesting road ahead of it.
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