The Rise of QR Codes

Ryan Purvis  00:00
Hello, and welcome to the digital workspace works podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Buckner. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines, the problems they face and how they solve them. The years they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took, they will help you to get to grips with the digital workspace inner workings.

Unknown Speaker  00:32
Good, how are you?

Unknown Speaker  00:35
Too bad, thanks, bad. Sorry, I was late, I was just getting my father. modem has finally arrived router. So in the setting a fencer from the gate.

Heather Bicknell  00:46
So that's exciting. So that will you're not using fiber now. But you will be.

Unknown Speaker  00:50
Yeah, we have a 4g cord, which has been a bit ropey when you do have to do and the fibers being in the house, it's already it's already set up. But But the way they do it here is they configure a router for you and they send it to you. So you got to wait for that, which only takes two days, which isn't too bad. But for some reason, the provider that set things up here didn't there's only one major provider that I know of. It's called Lupita. And they had the address wrong. So the guys that I've used to sign up off service with they couldn't find the address and match it to the wife, the fiber connector. So they had to fix this administrative issue, not a installation issue. So it's taking them 10 days. So that feels like 10 days. Pretty sure now that that's been done. So now that we've just arrived and plugged it in. So once we finished Can we go and see lo works.

Unknown Speaker  01:49
Awesome. Oh, that's exciting. Jealous?

Unknown Speaker  01:54
Well, it's a bit it's a bit of a new new infrastructure. I think the US has been on the old T one t three e one launch. I think I called them back in the day. The problem is to replace all that with fiber, you have to go dig up all the payments.

Heather Bicknell  02:14
I do some people do have it. But yeah, it is. Yeah, it is, you know, that needs to happen first. So I do have some friends that who have it in their homes, but it's not not everywhere. So how is your how's your vacation

Unknown Speaker  02:31
was great. We were in Cape Town for six days. In the one wind farm area, so Stellenbosch. If you ever look up a hotel called spear, which I can highly recommend, I'm actually a bit of an idiot because I didn't take my laptop with me. And if we if I tell you my laptop was mailed according to a standard an extra three or four days because I thought it was that good with the kids really bent over backwards to make it a good stay for us. So yeah, we're impressed with it. And well, it's equipping them what was wipin, which feels like and I'm probably done most of my day. It was a normal working day and probably get away with using it for email and Word documents, PowerPoints and that sort of stuff. But I'm responding to a thing at the moment, which requires two screens and you know, a lot of backwards and forwards and that and the Wi Fi there wasn't wonderful so you know, you wouldn't want to be trying to do something and getting frustrated by that. So we back one of the reasons came back was that but also you know, you can only spend so much time away from working and that sort of stuff without good control, good red wine and white wine, good sparkling wine, good. Good meat. Because African holiday and beautiful landscapes.

Heather Bicknell  03:56
That sounds nice. I know I've I've had South African wines I was just trying to remember the names of the wineries and it's escaping me but

Unknown Speaker  04:06
this is hundreds and this is why I sent you the text about QR codes I think that's the font of 2021 There you go. There's a QR code to scan can take you to an app or take it to a website all information so like what are rooms it has menus with QR code based menus are still paper based. But I think that's just an obvious thing as opposed to a practical thing. And we went on this one tram which takes you go basic pocket that one funds like a central point and it takes you down a track for as you go down the track he starts to belong. to hop on hop off, sort of things you go to Ricky bridges which are my favorites at I'm called. Or I can see that over coffee was called, really, you go to each one, each one's got their own sort of speciality if you'd like. So the first one was sparkling wine and oyster pairings. And then the second one was a really a bridge was paritosh. And a couple blends with chocolate. And we will go look with the kids as long to do three. So we went back for lunch and ended up going back to the hotel for lunch. And wine tasting at the hotel, so you can do you know, blends and pillows and capsules and wine drinker. And guitars is quite neat South Africa. So it's quite a strong brain. Lots of fun, lots of relaxation in the sun. So it's good.

Heather Bicknell  05:58
Yeah, vitamin D. So a QR code thing is that, are you seeing that as like a contactless thing in response to COVID? Or were you just noticing them, okay?

Unknown Speaker  06:12
For a long time, like barcodes, and you take them for granted in the sense that they just do a job. I think in response to COVID to mitigate context services, you've seen them certainly have seen them. When you go and you go to a pub for lunch, you'd have you'd have a sort of scan here QR code to get the app to do order on you do the whole order and pay through the app, or to informational purposes. So as I say, the room set has made use of the guide to the hotel, which used to be a printed out folder with everything in it you no matter the real estate, all services, etc, that'll be good. That's all QR code was a nice way I think for you know, there's obviously a cost reduction because Don't forget print dollar books, every time they make a change to something. And it's digital, digital environment where you now or qR coding scanning, somebody has taken you to a menu. The menu tells you what they've got now that can be updated dynamically to say to remove menus are turned off, which they were doing. So there was a day where they didn't have the muscles that they'd normally have. So that was off the menu one day and I said, Hey, where's the muscles going? So I want to tell it to the owner where to start. So that takes a couple people they completely then need to look at the fastly to notes on a stock. But don't get asked by people that have been in before. Hey, with the muscles, obviously, we've been there for a long time. So we use manual bartonville. Okay, I want to have, you know, the state that I want to have carried tonight, whatever it is, and we noticed when things would come on and off the menu. And then things would come on the menu. And it just was such a cool way for me because I printed out the meanings all the time. They kind of fixed on what they offer. But now we'll start with a digital view, they could actually change that they could go lionfish, or they could become Leo could be green, which was the one day they can dynamically change it in the menu without having to reprint menu, which means a chef can go in the morning to the market and get what they want. And actually just had a day where they just completely changed the menu and no, no, no, but they'd be surprised. So I think Yeah, I've seen QR codes everywhere. I'm sure everyone else is the first one to see it. And I think it's as I say it's a good translation layer to blogging the deputy COVID. And also to share information quickly. I've seen on business cards as well, which we've always had them because it makes sense as a marketing thing. But instead of giving someone a business card, they say hey, scan my QR code. And that would go straight to your LinkedIn connections to connect. And I had about three people this week, which which you know, when one person does, it's quite a novel. But we'll see we will do it in a week. Like while it's actually now it's taken off. And it's actually built into the queue into the LinkedIn app. But it doesn't actually taken the QR code and printed on the business card from three different companies. They're all one, guys, maybe it's a drinking, you know, sort of culture now too, because they will do all the time. So I think it's I think it's a good move. Generally.

Heather Bicknell  09:32
Yeah, I think you're certainly more likely to scan the QR code than, you know, type in www.linkedin.com forward slash, you know, yeah. Which we're likely to. That's fast and kind of Yeah, I think there is like a novelty to it, but I haven't seen it as much. I don't know if it's just because you know, I haven't been out and over a year. Really to witness that? I think there are probably restaurants using it here too. But I haven't seen it on a business card or anything like that. But to be fair, I haven't seen a business card in person in quite some time.

Unknown Speaker  10:14
So but what is funny you said, because I was chatting to one of the guys in the trend, and I gave my card is, obviously the business card for ages do people still do this as well? I don't know. These things not carry with me to give up because it's easily wasting. We are breaking the conversation and saying, oh, give me a number all at the end awkwardly say, give me a number we can contact records easy. Here's my call, you know, don't be alarmed if you want to chat. And there's no pressure on being friends poster, the contact field if you've ever been.

Heather Bicknell  10:47
Yeah, yeah, but then at least you don't lose it, I actually printed out my first batch of physical business cards. I think in February 2020. In anticipation, I was like, it's my year, I'm gonna go to more industry events, it's gonna be great. You know, good to make myself business cards. And then actually, when I by the time I picked them up, I knew that these things weren't happening. So it's kind of just like, it's all about a bunch of money at it. But I still have a whole pack. So my business card,

Unknown Speaker  11:28
we changed, we changed the dresses I said from the first race and then the second. And now obviously, we say I would have probably given out maybe one a month. So it would take me 15 months to get rid of all the cards that I've got. That's probably why get them out so freely, because it's like, just use the card number and you know, that sort of thing has value that way, at least it's something physical.

Heather Bicknell  11:55
Exactly, that's tangible. Although it would be interesting as sort of a substitute, you know, you could have a QR code on your phone and have someone scan that and just have that be, you know, that takes you to take them to your website or, or your LinkedIn. It's kind of like a substitute for

Unknown Speaker  12:17
the LinkedIn app, there's a QR code. But if you think about the workflow again, there, so now I've got to go to LinkedIn. I'm gonna click on my face. And I have your profile. I go to the gear. I mean, this is like we're ready five seconds,

Heather Bicknell  12:38
following along.

Unknown Speaker  12:40
Find it. Find. So that's that's already, you know, that doesn't work. So you got to have something. So yeah, having having a printed out now. I'm not curious to try and find it again. But I can find I can't find this. Maybe I didn't see a thing over there. But it's I mean, that's like all our business costs. While I've had them on, where people use them all, I don't know, I'd have to show someone how to scan a QR code. And he once was peed again. Because I think that's the other thing is using QR codes, everyone. But does anyone know that your phone will actually pick it up through the camera? Or that is just a fancy looking barcode. And then they expect you as a fancy device to to read it?

Heather Bicknell  13:38
Yeah, yes, it yeah, it kind of probably depends what industry you're in, and how custom people are. But I mean, I guess that's another thing that with all of this, that, you know, tech literacy around, that will increase because you know, if you're going to your favorite restaurant, and they don't have a menu posted on the outside, they just have a QR code, you're incentivized to figure out how that how that thing works. And they probably have like, you know, a step, a step by step, pull up your phone and pull up your camera and send it over the QR code and

Unknown Speaker  14:14
that kind of thing.

Unknown Speaker  14:16
And when we're doing the generation, you actually can choose to put instructions in the code. So you can generate the logo. So you can generate the code, sort of just the code. Or you can generate the code and put a logo in the middle. Or you can you read the code alone, relating around instruction at the bottom where you can just read instructions, or you can say please scan here with your camera and put in a really small font, but then you got to print it sort of, you know, five centimeters by five centimeters to see it couldn't we did do a couple of tests with it. But yeah, that's that's one way to bridge the gap. But you're on I think, I think if there's any positive out of this whole COVID pandemic Miss is that we've brought everyone's levels up using teams and using zoom and that is probably the most common Finding, but also these other little tricks that we'll learn about the opening there, but never really leveraged them.

Heather Bicknell  15:08
Yeah, taking things from sort of a novelty status to really practical, integrated to everyday type things. And I do think some of this stuff, I mean, you know, it's nice to have, I think, you know, obviously, seeing people in person interacting, especially with family in person, is, I think always going to be preferred. But having the option to sort of bridge the gap with, you know, face calls, I think, you know, I knew my friends growing up, who would face call their parents, especially in college, like, they were International, it was like, a big thing. You know, I, any friends I had, who had whose parents were living internationally, they would Skype them. But people, you know, in the country, that wasn't really a thing. You know, you might call your parents every now and again. But now, I think it's sort of, you know, I suppose there's FaceTime and stuff, but I still think it has made that more common just to, like, make other types of interactions happen, not just like trying to play on face to face meetings.

Unknown Speaker  16:15
Yeah, I think that Well, I mean, I hope that kind of sustains, although I do find it frustrating when you're, you're sitting in a coffee shop or restaurant, or you're sitting other day, and a guy's FaceTime and his girlfriend, you face and you phone, each other talking to each other. I'm thinking how much like what was the point first, and then also, you know, I can get an entire conversation. Because they're both talking about headphones on or gals, you know, if you got the headset on one voice, but not two, but we know exactly what they're doing this weekend. And I think some people need to memorize a lot of the rules and manners that need to committed where you don't do face calls in the middle of public, you do it in a secluded area, I was approved away.

Heather Bicknell  17:05
Getting there some etiquette to it. I mean, just like I think most people wouldn't. You know, taking a normal phone call inside most businesses isn't considered very polite. I mean, you're not supposed to do it on an airplane, or, you know, in the hospital or something like that. They're like, you know, dude in the lobby or whatnot, so probably a norm that will just develop over time.

Unknown Speaker  17:34
I remember walking around Sainsbury's one day, and I was watching a lady walk around with a phone in front of your face. And she's actually in the time that she walked around for the trolley full of stuff. And she hadn't been one item in the trolley, while they were was, you know, kind of thing. What's the point of coming to the shop to talk to your friend and then not if you don't do any shopping? You know, I just got another cup of coffee ever go? Talk to them while you have a cup of coffee. Nice, then you. You achieved something. But that's just

Heather Bicknell  18:07
so did you have I know you had sort of an iPad workday story with the trip was there more to it than what you mentioned that that

Unknown Speaker  18:15
top? Well, so I think the first thing that was the first time in a long time, I didn't take a laptop. And I got into trouble for not taking a laptop because I had to come back for work. And I, you know, could have probably done some of the work on my iPad, because I'm working on something that's got a lot of documents, such as a lot of Word documents, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, project planning, all that kind of stuff. That's a really, you know, meaty piece of work that has to get done. So I just took the iPad with, I mean, I was chatting with one of my book, really, it's an all iPad Mini that I read all the time with iPad Pro, which I take that as my intermediate device, if I need to do something, I've got IDs, but I also use it to watch movies on and all that kind of stuff, as well. You know, with the Wi Fi being a bit dodgy in the hotel, can I download a bunch of stuff during the day while we're out on Netflix and then we come over and we'll be able to watch whatever show whatever series we're watching without worried about the Wi Fi being an issue. But we were this was really cool for me it was I you know, when we were going to move the aircraft we know sort of my son was was doing his thing playing with his cars and whatever my wife was sitting with a baby and a story in a book collection over my bed. Let me see if I could work. So I took the work that I wanted to do. And a couple emails follow up on that now obviously an offline state so you can only do so much work. And one of the things that I found frustrating I'll start with at first is that I was trying not before we left I downloaded everything I needed to work on on to OneDrive on the device so that if I did want to do something I had some time It was all there. But the problem that I had with an iPad is every time I tried to open a Word document, for some reason word tries to contact the sub sub server on the internet to open the files, you can't if you open any of the files, as you see, it doesn't look at them. So that was irritating. But besides that, so what I didn't say, I was trying to explain to my wife this morning is, if you've got an idea in your head, and you just want to capture it, you can just open it up, and you can just open the app to start writing. Now there's lots of apps that are really good like draft, it's quite good for this, we just open up and you start typing straightaway, there's no rigmarole to getting it. And even even with Word, you can open it up and you can open a new word document takes a couple seconds, but then you're into a Word doc, and you can just break stuff down. So that was that was quite a good experience what I quite liked about it in comparison to a Windows device, totally my that sort of with what I've got, as opposed to whatever. If I wouldn't work like I was working on the plane report very difficult to do. And I explain what I mean by that. So I would be I'd have my word document open and I'll be typing away. And then my son would need attention. So I closed my bed, I put it back in the seat cover and do something with him for five or 10 minutes, then you'd get distracted, to buy something else not need me anymore, and then not have my time. So I pulled up a bank, and I opened it up. And I've just once the facial recognition as long as you record which takes, you know, split seconds, you're right back where you wouldn't just carry on. Now my experience with a Windows device is not like that is when you close a device and you open it up, it takes a couple seconds to open. And I know we'd beat windows on these tests. But it's the thing that was bugging me about is it takes so long to open, then you got to log in now my fingerprint reader for some reason stopped working tonight, we'll talk a long password. So that's even one time I've actually got back into my son's back to me going Daddy, I want some things that have been distracting. And I have to close the eyes again and put it back and see if I can do anything with it. So then back to the port side on the Windows device. I won't even take it out on their mother in the seat space between your flowers, the economy, that seed space, the Windows device, God does not fit there. It's just the way there's no way the fences are too big. Because the sea level is perfect. Because you pop it up, you got the magic keyboard, it's exactly the rights run size. And it's right back into me Whoops, I can steal, I feel like I'm stealing time back instead of using time. So I've managed to write about 14 pages between the two, the flight and the flight back. And I'm only talking about two flights

Unknown Speaker  22:38
of stuff that I needed to get out my head. No, this is not about writing a book. But I mean, put up points and paragraphs of stuff, 14 pages. Basically, it's called three hours of of time. For that was it made, you know, it's a support tool in that sense. And then of course, when I got back online, all the emails that I get up, replying to them online, which most cars will do, most people will do though, they'll do email on the fly, then when they dispose of all that stuff, word, all the documents I had worked on the new documents, I was able to save those into the OneDrive. So those are synchronized, so that it gone back into the channel. It's just these little nuances that I think Marshall needs to fix to make iPad work really well. But other than that, it was actually ideal. Now, if I didn't, I mean, so that's why we the other piece is battery life, you know, for that for that two hour flight, you know, I only took a 5% of the battery, maybe 6%. Which, again, it was opening closing all times I wasn't using that. But you know, if I had to work before, and after that I would still have been able to use that probably get six out of seven out of which I've never got another Windows device. I think that's and I've never used to surface in anger the same way that when compared to and I don't know many guys that don't have the adventure pack plugged into the service all the time. When they're working almost it's the first thing to do before they even open the thing up.

Heather Bicknell  24:13
Hmm, yeah, I was just thinking, you know, if you had a surface of Windows Hello, and you know, it was a lightweight one there, this experience would probably be a lot more similar, obviously Microsoft, the, I guess the blessing and a curse of being on all the hardware and not having, you know, a lot of devices just won't have Windows Hello. Face Recognition is just really nice. So you can see how that would be would just remove that barrier of having to like fuss with the device all the time and kind of keep you in that that workflow

Unknown Speaker  24:53
if I stick it up in a login and that's really not that was what I was before. For you go do something else, you know, it's that experience, I think Apple, Cisco. So right. If I could justify buying a new machine right now and probably be buying then one of the new m one processor Macs. Because I mean, as much as I need to write code or stuff every so often. I'm really thinking that to do that through Wi Fi devices, the way to go. I think that's where the windows ecosystem is. That's your bang for buck, I think is Let's end it off here because I want to go get my father sorted out.

Heather Bicknell  25:39
Sounds good. Yeah. And we can chat through that process. On the next one.

Unknown Speaker  25:43
Sounds good. Thanks. Bye, Ryan,

Unknown Speaker  25:47
says I.

Ryan Purvis  25:51
Thank you for listening today's episode. Hey, the big news app producer, editor. Thank you, Heather. for your hard work on this episode. Please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes or the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the D ww podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website WWW dot digital workspace works. Please also visit our website www dot digital workspace works and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai