Is this the best we can do?

A week or two back, a colleague gave me a sample of the QR code panels that are being piloted along the South Downs Way.

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I was quite excited to see it, because it turned out not to be just a QR code, but also incorporated an NFC chip and a LAYAR augmented reality image.

I’m quite dismissive of QR codes, but only because some people get over excited about what is, after all, just another way of inputting a URL into a browser. I keep telling my colleagues that a QR code is only as exciting as the website it points to.

But the addition of an NFC chip and the Augmented Reality suggested that a lot more thought had been put into this pilot than some QR codes I’ve seen.

So, I’ve been playing with it, and I’m disappointed. My phone doesn’t have NFC, so I couldn’t try that. But I could download the LAYAR app and have a go with that.

It took a few goes to get LAYAR to recognise the image, but eventually it said “Getting Content”. Then it said “Point at the page again to view LAYAR content” so I obeyed, and …

nothing.

Ho-hum. So I resorted to scanning the QR code. The Scan app quickly recognised the QR, and served up … this:

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Oh dear. I’d sort of expected a page formatted for mobile devices, not one I’d have to “pinch to zoom” to read. And, more importantly, I really had expected to be taken to a page that told me about the the South Downs way, not a link to a survey about using QR codes.

To be fair, the little red buttons at the top do link to various places along the South Downs Way, but I had expected each QR code to take me to information about a specific place. Click on one of the buttons and this is what you get:

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Yawn.

So lessons learned: Format for mobile if you are providing links to web content in the countryside (duh)! Survey your users after they’ve experienced the content. And build the engaging and dynamic web content before you install the QR panels. Oh, what’s that? You did? Well, you and I must have a different understanding of “engaging and dynamic” my friend.

And I might have shared my thoughts with the developers via their handy and prominent survey, had not all the questions been variations on a) “Let me count the ways in which QR codes are splendid” or b) “I’ve never heard of QR codes”.

All in all, I think National Trails have been sold a pup.


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I came to cultural heritage via five years working at Midland Bank when I left school. In my free time, I volunteered as a costumed interpreter at Kentwell Hall and, with re-enactment societies, at various medieval sites around the UK and France. When, one evening, a few of us said “we could make a business out of this” I left my job at the bank to go to college, first to get an Art Foundation and then to Manchester Polytechnic to join an innovative course called Design for Communications Media. I specialised in Educational Media Design, with the intention of applying what I was learning to cultural heritage. During my vacations and upon graduation I worked for the nascent company my friends had started, Past Pleasures, creating immersive living history festivals at Lancaster and Tunbridge Wells, as well as projects including: an exhibition for the centenary of the Commonwealth Institute; a design for a metafictional Sherlock Holmes exhibition in Croydon; and, a game that combined real-time investment advice from 300 year-old characters at the Bank of England Museum with a digital simulation, tracking the players’ investment portfolio from the founding of the bank to its tercentenary. In 1996 I helped found JMD&Co, and for two years I also lectured on Heritage Tourism and Visitor Management and Interpretation modules for a Portsmouth University validated HND/degree course at Farnborough Technical College. Subsequently, I enrolled in the new Distance Learning delivered Masters’ degree in Museum Studies at Leicester University, where I became interested in the social use of space, particularly Bill Hillier’s “space syntax,” and the increasing futility of cultural heritage sites trying to tell doggedly linear stories in three-dimensional spaces. Although my dissertation explored models for mapping interpretation, and particularly learning styles, onto spaces, a satisfactory reconciliation of linear story and three-dimensional space eluded me. After graduation, I decided my time in the “small business” end of cultural heritage was over for a while, and I left JMD&Co to join a cultural institution, the National Trust, as a Regional Community, Learning and Volunteering Manager. I brought the first National Trust iPad into use at Batemans, where, combined with a wax cylinder record player, and the help of renowned folk singer, Jon Boden, we’ve returned Rudyard Kipling’s voice back into his old home. However, one of the innovations which I am most proud of is the National Trust’s virtual tours. Working with a small company, and a range of disabled stakeholders, we created a touch-screen based human computer interface that could also, if required, be controlled with other input devices, and allowed visitors with a variety of disabilities to fully enjoy the virtual tour. The teams’ achievement was recognised with a Jodi Award for Excellence in accessible digital media in 2008.

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