The latest mobile phones in the UK are using barcodes to provide one of the first practical applications of augmented reality. It’s technology that could see barcodes appear on thousands of physical items – something which would open up new opportunities for technical authors providing user assistance for equipment.
The advert below shows how it’s being used today:
Barcode Scanning wit..
In the future, users could use their mobile phone to scan a barcode (like the one below) on an item to call up instructions on how to use it.
The consequence would be that technical communicators would need to write content that can be read easily on the screen of a mobile phone (until pico projectors become more widespread).
See also
Will Nokia’s new technology reinvent the manual?
Ellis
There are so many uses for Vizitags – as we call them – apart from just attaching them to the back of a published work so you can find out more about it, authors could embed them in a manual’s text e.g to enable the display of demonstration video clip on the reader’s mobile phone while she reads the manual.