QR Codes Are Obsolete
by Michele von Dambrowski
Not only are Quick Response codes dead, they “should have never lived,” claims Dean Browell, PhD, executive vice president for the social media strategy firm Feedback in Richmond, VA.
Browell likens QR codes to the ill-fated CueCat, a cat-shaped code reader that plugged into a computer like a mouse. Wired and a few other magazines sent the reader to subscribers so that they could scan bar codes for more information on articles and ads in their publications. A year after the device’s introduction in the late 1990s, the verdict was swift. The reviews said the device was “unnatural” to use, and it was “not solving a problem,” Browell explains.
QR codes also look hideous. According to Browell, the behavior of consumers when they see a QR code is to ask, “What the heck is that?”