The year is 1994. Nelson Mandela becomes South Africa’s first black president following years of apartheid; U.S. ice skater Nancy Kerrigan is infamously attacked in a scandal that embroils competitor Tonya Harding; and Nirvana fans are left reeling by the sudden death of frontman Kurt Cobain.
It’s also the year that gave us “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, hit sitcom “Friends” and the Budapest Memorandum, which supposedly prohibited the Russian Federation and other signatories from using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine.
Starting to sound like a distant memory?
Well, unless you’re the most avid of pub quizzers, you may be surprised to know that way back in 1994, Japanese automotive company Denso Wave developed a certain machine-readable matrix barcode that we have all come to know and love as – the QR code.
As a resident of Ukraine in recent years, I like many others have seen the humble QR code become a mainstay of eateries, cinemas, vaccination certificates, airline ticketing, and many other aspects of daily life. Those happy little monochrome squares have burgeoned to increase business efficiency, enhance connectivity and data flows, and minimize human-to-human contact – a big plus in a pandemic.
For the most part, QR codes have become an invaluable part of daily life. Ukraine – a country with a booming IT sector – has gone full throttle. Many banks deploy them within their apps to validate financial transactions and operations; the Ukrainian National Museum website has a page encouraging its readers to “scan a code – save a life”; while a quick scan of a QR code could even begin your journey to join the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces.
But with the rapid pace of technological change, AI, and the Internet of Things, how many years until today’s Gen Z celebrities on TV show retrospectives giggle about the early 2020s and reminisce about QR codes with a jocular “OMG, remember them?”
Like so many things that have their time and place, the same may eventually become true of our trusted little virtual four-edged friends. But as of now, it looks like they’re here to stay, and they’re awesome, right? Right?
Well, perhaps to an extent. On a positive note, they haven’t gone Skynet (a la “Terminator 2”) and inadvertently triggered Armageddon, so there’s that. But they do require their human masters to exercise a degree of thought and common sense as regards the setting and user experience.
Restaurant experience 2.0
QR codes exploded across Ukraine’s bars, coffee shops, and restaurants in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Their big plus was to minimize human-to-human contact, with a happy consequence being the efficiency and environmental benefits of establishments not having to print and re-print menus to keep them constantly fresh and up to date.
They also solved (to an extent) the issue experienced by many foreigners in Ukraine of the old English language paper menus falling out of date or containing old prices due to less frequent reprints.
Fast forward to summer 2022. Firstly, we’re thankful that so much of the service sector has survived the ravages of COVID-19 on Ukraine’s economy. Now there is a whole new challenge, with war and martial law taking their toll on people’s lives and livelihoods. Mask mandates and social distancing have been all but forgotten, but the QR revolution looks like it’s here to stay.
So let’s look at the customer experience in a little more detail.
You walk into a restaurant in Kyiv. The predictable summer sun is shining, you’re in a good mood, hungry, and ready to tuck into something from the eclectic and lengthy menu of delicious appetizers, starters, mains, and dessert. Oh, and don’t forget the wine menu, soft drinks menu, vodka menu, fasting menu, sharing menu, and the specials.
The waiter or waitress ushers you to your seat and promptly points to the small black and white sticker curling up at the corner of the table or pinned like a miniature Rembrandt to a metal easel positioned next to the serviettes. “The menu is on the QR code, I’ll be back to take your order.”
So far, so good.
Now, anyone who’s been to a café or restaurant in Ukraine will no doubt be familiar with how it goes. You sit down to look at the menu; then within two minutes, and before you’ve had time to even find your camera app, the efficient and friendly staff member is back to take your order. You need more time. “Dvi khvylyny budʹ laska” (“two minutes, please”), you say. Then, 10 minutes later, they’re back and you’re ready to go.
Or are you?
Whilst some establishments get it right – a simple, clear PDF menu giving diners the ability to glide across the page like a digital ballet dancer – others have designed theirs seemingly as if they’ve never had to actually use one.
As our chief editor admits, QR code menus have taken some of the pleasure away from going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, and then taking delight in studying the golden leather-bound pages (depending on where you are) and making one’s selection.
A comparison can perhaps be made with the joy of reading books. There’s still a huge market for physical books and all that comes with turning a page, but for adopters of Kindles and the like, you still expect the digital pages to resemble – well, something akin to a book.
But at the most confusing end of the digital restaurant menu spectrum, a quick scan of the QR code opens up an Instagram world of a hundred or more individually labelled image files, all requiring separate clicks.
Somewhere mid-spectrum by Ukraine’s standards are those menus spread across separate web pages and categories, with pretty pictures of every dish, that are equally as time-consuming to battle through before your waiter returns and you’re meant to be ready.
Added to that, if the internet connection is a bit ropey or you need to sign your life away via an online questionnaire to hop on to the Wifi, you’re equally doomed to get your order in at speed.
The “so what?” factor
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing inherently wrong with QR code technology. It’s just a simple (or not?) case of getting the execution right.
In a café or restaurant environment, a certain psychology is at play. Whilst conversing with your family, friends, co-workers, partner, or even Tinder date, you need to simultaneously bounce your attention on and off the menu – lightly perusing it in all directions with the grace of a swan until something delicious leaps off the page and you’re ready. You’ve done it. You can relax and get back to the conversation.
But no. You’re suddenly locked into a battle of wits trying to find the khachapuri menu; then when you scroll down you’ve forgotten or lost what you thought you saw. Worse, if your Ukrainian is as basic as mine, you try to articulate your final choice to the waiter but you can’t quite get it across, so you have to point it out on the menu. Except you can’t because that particular item is now lost in the QR vortex.
In the 1993 movie “Jurassic Park,” the character of Ian Malcolm, played by the iconic Jeff Goldblum, famously said: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Nobody is saying that QR codes are about to jump off the page and metamorphose into murderous velociraptors. Like any tech appendage, the way they’re deployed just needs to be kept in check. Please, keep it simple!
