The Observer, April 25, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 26
Pervasive presence of 2D barcodes on campus sparks various reactions
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They take up whole windows in Nord. They fit inside the "O" in The Observer. They help you find out when the next Greenie is coming. They get you a free subscription to Vanity Fair. The 2D bar codes littering campus do a lot of things – but are they useful?
"They're stupid," said junior Tom Guyer. He is one of many students on campus whose phone does not come equipped with a camera, but that's not why he doesn't use the bar codes. "If it did, I wouldn't do it anyway," said Guyer. "They tell you stuff you don't wanna know."
Guyer's opinion reflects that of many students at Case who have been inundated with the bar codes since the trial's official kick-off after spring break. The bar codes have graced everything from Greenie stops to the floor of Nord to sheets of paper pinned to bulletin boards. The problem is that people don't know what to do with them.
"It's confusing and seems sort of redundant," said freshman Brennon Ham. Some codes come with no indication of what the camera phone will display after scanning them. Other codes, especially those placed on posters, reiterate the message written on the poster. "Why bother scanning something if you can otherwise put it up there?" said graduate student Allyson Whipple.
Some uses of the bar codes have been more successful. Last weekend, the codes were used in a highly visible and philanthropic manner at Case's first Relay for Life event. Mobile Discovery pledged $1 for every code created or scanned by members of the Case community, raising over $4000 by last Monday.
One concern about the bar codes is their price. While data service is ubiquitous in Japan, where the 2D codes are currently popular, less than half of Americans have unlimited data plans for their cell phones. Without one of these plans, scanning costs a minimum $.02 per code or a few dollars a month for unlimited scanning, depending on the provider. This is a common reason that students have avoided participating in the Case trial. "I might if it didn't cost money," said Whipple.
Another problem is that the 2D barcodes used by Mobile Discovery are read by a program called ScanLife that is available for many camera phones, but not all. The ScanLife website (www.scanlife.com) lists 13 Alltel, 15 AT&T, 30 Sprint, 7 T-Mobile, 10 Verizon, and 32 "other" phones that support the software. Students who don't own one of these phones were out of luck in scanning the myriad of codes around campus.
To alleviate these concerns, Mobile Discovery provided students with a free "phone bank" starting last week. Eight phones were made available for students to use to scan and create codes if their own phones were incompatible with the trial. "We want to make sure that as many people as possible can enter," said Leigh Ann Barnes, the trial coordinator.
Students used these phones to participate in special programs including the Relay for Life fundraising and the QVC-sponsored prize program. For the latter, students could scan codes daily to enter into a drawing for items including a 19-inch flat screen HDTV, a GPS, a camera and printer, and other prizes from the home shopping network QVC. "My phone doesn't support the codes, but I borrowed one from [Barnes] to use around campus," said sophomore Matt Webster. "I used it mostly to enter the contests."
The contests required students to get others to scan the codes that they had created. Some students came up with creative ways to lure scanners in. "I used some false advertising," said senior Janice Makinen. She mimicked the codes already around campus; one "advertisement" she posted in Glennan urged viewers to scan the code and win a DeLorean. "I got something like 25 hits on that sign alone!"
Although not all students found the bar codes useful, the people behind the trial consider it an educational experience. "We have the raw technology that does X, Y, and Z, but how do you get people involved?" said David Miller, CEO of Mobile Discovery.
"It was a huge success to learn and see how codes may come to the market," said Barnes. In seven weeks, various use cases were tried and ways to improve the codes considered. One such improvement is the use of codes at their smaller sizes, rather than the large window sizes or poster sizes, to allow for better and less obtrusive placement in advertising. Another important revelation for the group was the learning element. "The findings showed how much time should be spent on education – what codes are and what they're used for," said Barnes. "Adoption and use will follow."
