QR code opportunities
QR codes are an amazing blessing for wayfinding and interpretive digital solutions. They can provide one click access to customised, location specific webpages that would otherwise not be easy to browse onto.
This utility underpinned the roll out of the Furneaux Geotrail on Flinders Island in 2018. Here the ten bespoke signage units were all supported by their own custom webpage. These sit in the webapp created for the project which is hosted on the local Flinders Island Museum website.
QR code challenges
The common problem with QR codes, is that they often do not provide access to site specific, customised digital product. Rather they link to pages of little or no direct value or relevance to the user standing beside a sign out in the field.
Why is this? Is it because of poor mobile coverage limiting the content and nuance of the product that can be served up? Is it the perennial lack of project funds meaning there’s nothing left in the budget to apply to the digital support platform once the signs and supporting landscaping are done? Does an agency’s IT team even permit any creative innovation in this space?
These issues are real, but they are also symptoms of an underlying problem. We have no commonly accepted sense of what the role and function of digital support in these outdoor settings should be.
The need for interpretive and wayfinding digital foundations
In the absence of a clearly understood and defined set of product expectations and outcomes, digital becomes a very discretionary value add product for signage. If digital is simply there to enhance, then we may choose accept the limitations of conventional, traditional signage solutions and let people put away their mobile devices – or not.
If however digital is recognised as an essential tool for land managers to use in meeting their core user accessibility obligations in a mobile optimised world, then we come at this space from a wholly different perspective. Modern users expect information to be available to them 24/7 in their native language in areas with internet coverage. Should managers choose not to engage in this space, they are simply ceding this ground to other third party providers to deliver core wayfinding and interpretive materials.
Prioritising UX design responses
When signs are printed and installed today without any digital support, they are potentially out of step with government agency user accessibility obligations. These require printed content to be also dual published in HTML and PDF formats in order to cater for visually impaired readers seeking to access text to speech facilities, or non-English speaking users needing to be able to conveniently read the material in their native language.
Appreciating and responding to this changed user environment is both an obligation and an opportunity for field managers today. The limitations of signage are a daily reality for them. Signs are expensive to design/manufacture/install, fade in the sun, hard to update and are subject to vandal attack/bushfires/floods etc just for starters. Integrating digital solutions into the way we communicate with users in the field, helps minimise our reliance on physical signage, at the same time as improving and enhancing the user experience.
The transition from planning to doing
We need to respond in a considered manner to the information needs of users as their circumstances change across the course of their visit. While mothership web platforms play an essential role in trip planning, there comes a point in the user experience where marketing stops and doing begins. “OK you’ve got me - I’m here now. You can stop promoting the experience on offer and help me undertake it in a safe and informed manner.”
Recognising and responding to this transition is fundamental to all mobile digital field responses. Content Management System (CMS) websites almost always now use responsive design to adapt CSS styling commands controlling content to align with the mobile device's screen size. While this works well when supported by home wifi or good mobile reception, it may prove very challenging to load in areas with poor/ intermittent internet coverage. This is because it takes time for the server to both build the page as requested by the user, as well as to apply the appropriate styling CSS set.
In areas with poor mobile coverage, static HTML web pages using adaptive designs to deliver separate phone and tablet pages avoiding all non essential javascript are likely to provide optimal UX results. As the page loads instantly there is no work for the server to do in actually building the page for delivery. Just like the ready made, gourmet sandwich, it is ready to hand over. No further processing is required.
But don't take just our word for this. As the helpful AI advisory describes it:
"Yes, static webpages are generally faster to load than CMS pages because they don't require server-side processing or database lookups to generate the content. Instead, static sites serve pre-built HTML files, while a CMS page needs to connect to a database, run scripts, and build the page for each visitor. This makes static sites faster, more secure, and less resource-intensive."
Smartphone PDFs embed content
But what about areas with no mobile coverage? Yes people can sometimes download a custom designed app intended to meet their needs in selected remote areas from their appstore prior to setting off. These can be hundreds of megabytes to download however, while still possibly needing the user to add to this by downloading precinct specific content in advance of their departure.
A very useful and adaptable alternative to this, is to invite the user to embed content onto their mobile device via a QR code link to a downloadable smartphone PDF specifically formatted to function like an app. The file size of these content only PDF packages is around 20MB meaning they can be easily downloaded out in the field even in areas of marginal internet coverage. This means that as people transition from this zone of poor coverage to no coverage they have the chance to download the wayfinding information they require for their immediate surrounds.
A smartphone PDF product has been in place at the Three Sisters precinct in the Australian Blue Mountains now since 2014. As people leave the main visitor area they can freely download the equivalent of a detailed field guide to carry with them on their walk prior to losing mobile coverage.
The utility of this is evident in the 2025 data downloads that show on busy weekend and holiday periods over 50 such smartphone guide downloads can occur in a day. This is where the value of the UX approach comes into play. The central issue here is to give people the information they need at the place and time when they need it.
Onsite digital - no need to plan ahead
Providing a level playing field for information delivery, has traditionally been a major challenge for wayfinding and interpretation. Some users who planned ahead may be information rich in terms of loading up with brochures and guidebooks prior to setting out. Others may be information poor, in that they have chanced upon a location with little or no prior preparation.
This divide is especially compounded if the user doesn't speak English or is visually impaired. Laying down a user accessibility foundation for digital solutions attempts to break down this barrier between the information haves and the have nots. The simple QR code interface provides equal access for all - even those with old phones or tablets with outdated operating systems and limited storage capacity.
All visitors require is a smartphone with an internet browser plus the means of storing and easily accessing PDF files on their devices. These are standard built in functions on all operating systems with iPhones having the added utility of being able to host and read PDFs via the built in iBooks app.
Mobile revolution - beyond the startup
It’s now over 15 years since the first iPad was released and the proliferation of Android smartphones and tablets arrived to challenge the dominance of the iPhone. In many ways the first decade of the mobile revolution was a rerun of the technology and software battles that marked out the arrival of personal computing in the 1980s. Where once there were many startup programming options and approaches to choose from, there soon became few as the best front runner options cemented their present day market dominance.
Similarly today, it's easy to forget just what a competitive mess the opening years of the 20teens were for the development of a coherent mobile digital user platform. Every internet browser was doing its own thing and doing it badly. It was only with the formal adoption of HTML5 in 2014 that the basis was laid for the high quality browsing experience we now take for granted.
With the browser/HTML interface being so unpredictable and variable, the only way of delivering a coherent and quality mobile browsing experience in the early 20teens was to wrap your content up in its own coding packaging in an app. Unlike many simple apps today that take advantage of a hybrid HTML5 workspace, these initial apps were very serious coding exercises. They were well beyond the means of any but major corporate players with adequate capital and recurrent funding to develop and maintain them.
This meant small to medium service providers had little meaningful chance of engaging in this space across this startup phase. It was really only after 2015 that things began to open up in terms of the options available. HTML 5 had arrived and with it came the era of the modern internet browser. Even with this resource in place however, there were still major issues with getting people to access the content the browsers could deliver.
QR (quick response) codes were invented by Masahiro Hara in 1994 after he had the brilliant idea while playing the boardgame Go, of using spatial arrangements of dots to code information. Six years later in 2000 QR codes received ISO certification and their official use on the web was established. You did however need a special app to read and use them and this limited their initial uptake.
It was only when first the Android and then the IOS operating systems included QR code scanning functionality into their camera apps by 2017, that QR codes started to be used more widely. Then of course came COVID in 2020 and from then on it was game over for the functional utility of these remarkable patterns of squares.
Users bring the coding, we deliver the content
Together these two key developments of the 20teens - the HTML5 powered, radically improved internet browsers and the widespread uptake of QR codes - are the pillars we can build upon going forward with mobile digital product development in heritage settings.
The system still of course relies on apps. Only now it is the apps people bring with them on their mobile devices as either pre installed system apps or others as they may have downloaded from their respective app store.
Today people basically bring all the technology required for digital engagement with them in their pockets and bags. What is needed from service providers is not coding - it’s content. The gate is open to us engaging cheaply, simply and efficiently in this space. All we really need to do now is recognise this opportunity exists and develop models of engagement to promote its development.
Collaborative product development
This is an area we have been actively working on now for over ten years. It has been assisted by our small to medium enterprise clients who were seeking to provide digital engagement as part of their product suite, but lacked the means to do so.
The key asset most of these collaborations has, is the client's own website. It doesn’t matter how this is built, simply that it exists. The point is that the client’s website does not itself contain or format the user content. It simply hosts a static web app solution in an assets folder. This occurs in exactly the same way that PDF files sit archived as separate, self contained content packages on their site. The website is the mothership, web app is the landing craft.
Firewalling the web app
This separation between the highly specific functionality of the digital user experience in the field - the landing craft - and the mothership website that hosts it, is crucial. Webmasters are rightly very conservative about what new content or innovation they allow to be added to their websites. Even aside from the core issues of security and overloading databases, matters like new content affecting search engine optimisation (SEO) are very real and carefully nuanced matters of their workflows.
The system of the "mothership" website also hosting a "landing craft" web app effectively puts up a firewall between the two. This is possible because the web app options we use and are not built using a CMS platform like Wordpress or Shopify. You can’t host one CMS site within another.
Rather web apps use hand-coded static HTML pages that have been around forever. The Dreamweaver program comprising part of the main Adobe creative suite, provides a simple and effective means of building these following some basic training on the platform and in overall web design.
Dreamweaver and design consistency across the Adobe Creative Suite
The benefit of hand coding web apps in Dreamweaver, is that it essentially provides the design team with the same creative blank page they used to the signage and printed materials using Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign.
This means that the web app designs can easily pick up and reference the branding used in the signage media carrying the QR codes. Instead of a user clicking the code and being taken to a completely separate, stylistically distinct operating environment, they effectively connect with a direct extension of the sign before them. Here they can both read the sign on their device while at the same time engaging with such additional content as may be provided.
Nor is the web app limited to just providing a single standalone page. It is easily developed as a fully functioning small website serving up both separate tablet and phone versions via adaptive designs. This occurs where a small javascript snippet recognises the user's screen size and thereafter directly loads to correct page required.
The traditional complaint about adaptive designs is that they need both the mobile and the tablet pages to be updated in the event of any changes being required. The nature of the content being presented however doesn’t usually require much, if any, intervention. Just as signs sit quietly doing their work in the background for years, so too does the web app. In the case of updateable information needing to be provided to users such as matters of track closures and the like, then this remains the clear domain of the client's web platform.
A key benefit of this approach is that the ongoing maintenance costs of operating this system are nil. Static HTML is a fully enclosed data package just as a PDF is. There is no chance for hacking to occur as can happen when CMS sites send requests to the server to build a webpage. Hence no security patch ins are needed as part of the regular maintenance of the asset. This hosting arrangement for example has functioned effectively now for both stages 1 and 2 of the Ballina Cultural Ways project with nil recurrent expenditure since its creation in 2017.
Foundations for developing custom UX digital design responses for visitors to heritage places
A key feature of this web app approach is its scaleability. Build a simple one off page in support of a single sign or build a fully detailed mini website - it doesn’t matter. Consider also the user context wherein the QR code link will operate. There may well be good 4G coverage available, thereby allowing the option to include video or audio content.
The key point here is not so much to identify the possible end products that can be delivered, as it is to build creative foundations going forward. Even leaving aside any AI considerations, mobile digital creativity and innovation is everywhere in evidence around us. The opportunities for the UX digital experience in areas of natural or cultural heritage significance to participate in and benefit from these new user paradigms are even now being explored. We need to ensure the structures and creative mindsets needed to better support these are also in place.