/AT&T_Mobile_Barcodes

Before 2D barcodes/QR codes were too out of fashion for the general public, AT&T created a new URL barcode system with marketing features: it redirected to an internal service first (to gather analytics) before redirecting to the final destination, very similarly to how link shorteners work today.

To sell the idea of their own format and their own mobile application, they decided to create a campaign based on several video vignettes showing how barcodes should be used to help customers, the advantages of their system, and a little tutorial on how to use it.

The website itself worked like a long, interactive video experience. It augmented the educational aspect of the video content by allowing users to navigate back and forth between each video segment, offering little cues and links when appropriate.

At a time where video streaming and free seeking was a pipe dream, this website's implementation surprised many by making it effortlessly easy to navigate through the video experience, and learn about barcodes.

While I'm pretty proud of the technical work involved on getting this site done, it's interesting to notice that just a few years later, almost everything about this website is outdated. An experience like this can now easily be implemented with some embedded YouTube videos, Flash itself is not even a thing anymore (even for interactive video content), and 2D barcodes, well... they were never exactly popular.