Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Moo's New NFC-enabled Paper+ Business Cards
Design Milk: Admit it, your desk drawer harbors a graveyard of business cards you took in good faith, but quickly forgot about. The problem with cards is they’re a remnant of last generation’s pre-digital habits, something we give each other more out of social practice than everyday practicality. But custom online stationer Moo has upgraded the business card with a new feature which literally taps into our app-happy to help along personal and professional networking.
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3 comments:
This is an extremely interesting concept, one that must have had a lot of research invested into it. This product clearly follows the trends of NFC and chip technology such as Apply Pay, Google Wallet, Square, and more. However, there is a major flaw here that exists in all products that are similar to this. Universality. The first inherent problem is that even if you did assume that everyone was familiar with this concept (which not that many are), in the video, I did not hear Apple, iPhone, or App Store mentioned once. Over 40 percent of smartphones users have iPhones, additionally a lot of the innovative, cutting-edge apps are developed for both iPhone and Android, which this product is not. I do however think that it is a interesting product and maybe a few years down the road, when more people are welcoming to this trend of technology that uses near-by technology, I think this may have a chance.
These Paper+ products designed by Moo are an ingenious idea. By reinventing the business card so it can directly link someone to a website or computer function is a relatively simple way to increase the noticeability of yourself. It's nice because the business card will now more effectively do what it always has, which is serve as a quick reference for someone to your name and your work. By linking your website or portfolio directly to the card you can do exactly that without making someone search for your name online. The convenience and versatility of the NFC chip is what really drives this whole concept, creating virtually endless possibilities for not only business cards, but all paper products. The only downside to this idea is that the cards only work with smartphones, which isn't really an issue since most Americans have a smartphone by now, but what if you want to view someones portfolio in more detail on a larger computer screen? Sure you could look it up, but that isn't improved by the functionality of the card. Another huge issue is that many smartphone users use iPhones which don't currently support other NFC devices besides Apple Pay. If/when Apple removes this major roadblock I think these paper products will be able to seriously take off, until then I think normal less expensive business cards will do.
I think what surprises me the most is how cheap it is. Sure you can buy 500 business cards for $10, but can yours interact with modern day tech? Come on people keep up! Although very cool, I have a few problems with the product. It has the same idea as barcode scanners on your phone. Although there is no chip inside a barcode it is pretty much the same idea with a difference in price. This might be a little more advanced, but think about it, you could just print a barcode on the back of you business card customers and friends could scan it and share whatever information you want to. I also wonder what program the phone is using to read the information on the chip, and if there are only certain models that will support the NFC tech. All this being said, I would most defiantly purchase a few of these, but only because they are so cool. I think it is going to be hard for this company to find people that want to buy this, but if they can get the price down even further they might find success.
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