Barcodes, and optimism

I just wanted to briefly update yesterday's entry. Firstly, I've been reading a lot today about Microsoft's Surface interface. There are a good number of interaction designers being pretty negative about it's usefulness, and Chris Bernard (one of Microsoft's User Experience Evangelists) responding to that negativity by suggesting that there should be a bit more vision, creativity, and enthusiasm.

I think they're both right—we need enthusiasm and openness to new ideas, and some blue sky thinking. We need people putting technology out there and encouraging people to create. But part of the job of a user experience/usability/interaction design professional is to look at how things might actually work in the real world. How people could use them. How technology could fit into their life. Why it solves a problem for humanity, or enhances the experience of life.

All this just made me think that I didn't want to appear too negative about Semipedia yesterday: I think the idea's interesting and exciting, and I want to think of, or find out about, a really great way to use it.

Chris Bernard's blog

Applying a use case to a technology

I came across something today called Semipedia. This is a "community-driven project" that enables barcodes to be printed out and stuck to stuff. Someone can then come along with a barcode-reading enabled mobile phone, read the barcode, and be automatically forwarded to a mobile-ready web page related to it. Their website has lots of information on how this works.

Can you actually think of a useful application of it though? I tried. I really did. I love the idea of embedding links to information in the physical environment—it seems to have so many useful applications. I just can't think of one . . .

There are a few limitations to think about:

• You need a barcode-reading mobile phone (maybe these will become ubiquitous)
• You need a web-enabled mobile phone, and a live connection (maybe these will become ubiquitous too)
• It costs money to download the data the barcode points you too (maybe the flat-rate data payment model will become pervasive, so there'll be no marginal cost)
• You need web pages suitable for mobiles (maybe mobile will handle a greater range of pages; maybe more providers will produce mobile content)
• Someone needs to have the motivation to produce barcodes and stick them to things (maybe there'll be a good commercial reason to do so)

These are the limitations that sprang to my mind. At the moment, enthusiasts are sticking them to tourist sites, famous buildings, neighbourhood shops, and so on. Other enthusiasts (presumably) and general early-adopting types are getting thrills out of how cool the technology is (and it is!).

But what's an actual real use case . . . . My problem with it, from reading what I've read, is that they don't have one—maybe they're hoping that by putting it out there, people will use their imagination and come up with some great application for it, and maybe they're right.

But if you already have a web-enabled mobile phone, and there's mobile content to look at, why do you need a barcode? You could just type a URL that someone stuck on the wall. And why would you even need a URL—unless you don't know where you are (possible).

I keep thinking of a warehousing or logistics environment: wouldn't it be neat to barcode everything automatically, and then warehouse staff could scan the item to see what it was, or how to pack it or, er . . something? There must be a use. There just must be. But the struggle I'm having here—and the issue that is not addressed at all on Semipedia's website, so far as I can see—is the "why". It's technology for technology's sake, in the way that much of Ajax and web 2.0 is. It's technology-centred not user-centred, and while there's definitely room for that free experimentation in the world, I really hope someone thinks of a good use case soon...