Beyond Cash: How We Designed the QR Ang Bao Experience

Hello, it’s been a while since the last update. One of my goals for this year is to journal more and create new works, so I’m excited to kick off with this blog post!

I walk you through the process and the journey behind creating the QR Ang Bao, a project I had worked on with Roger:

Step 01:

Riding on the w@Ve$~

We knew we wanted to do something that is related to Chinese New Year just so to ride on the waves to make our designs relevant when uploaded. Roger immediately suggested for us to work on the QR Ang Bao as Singapore is moving towards a cashless society.

[side track]

I had received my very first QR Ang Bao last year and I gotta say that it felt really odd because: 
• I had never received such a small, squarish red packet
• It lacks the thickness of a red packet stuffed with notes
• I had no way to peek and know immediately the amount I was given 
• I felt like it was wrong of me to scan the QR to receive the “payouts” 

Thoughts of my first experience with QR Ang Bao ran through my mind (see above) and without hesitation, I was onboard with his direction.

With more and more news popping up, we liked this direction even more and eagerly moved on to the next step!

Step 02:

Understanding how QR code works

We found this website and WOAH, we are loving the content that's being put out! The writer has shared his experiments of damaging the QR codes to find out how much he can distort while retaining its readability.

Despite it being written in 2013, the writer's sharing remains very valuable to us even after almost a decade. Digesting his sharing had saved us a lot of troubles. Equipped with sufficient knowledge, it was about time to work our brains!

Step 03:

Wrecking Our Brains

Yay, how exciting! We went through a few rounds of ideation sessions—three to be exact—where we generated as many ideas as we could. While most of them didn’t quite make the cut, we are rather glad to have three concepts that we quite like!

Here are some key criteria we kept in mind while selecting our ideas:

• Easy to execute

• Relatable

• Understandable at first glance

• Likely for someone to adopt

Step 04:

Being Safe Than Sorry

The chosen concepts involve two stages:

1. Distortion of QR code

2. Recovery of QR code

It was essential for us to know that the concepts could work, hence we did some basic tests on Adobe Illustrator to find out if they pass the distortion and recovery test. The result was a big yes and off we went to the next step!

Step 05:

Keeping It Real

Before this project was actualised, we actually wanted to create our own QR, UI etc for the scanning and verification process but thankfully we scrapped that due to the lack of time. We got to keep everything real and truthful, which honestly made more sense looking back at it.

After running down to DBS branch to secure the QR Ang Bao, we finally kickstarted the making process!

"Count It" was the easiest to execute among all the concepts. During the design process, we discovered that the width of the $2 note is exactly twice its height, which made it perfect for forming the square QR code with four rectangular "notes." We extended the QR code to the very edges of each note, as the quiet zone could be any surface the user scans it on.

Solve It, on the other hand, was the hardest to execute as it requires a few layers: the reference layer, the connecting tabs, the split QR, the cover and the frame. The reference layer was kept in low contrast to guide receiver to solve the puzzle, and also to make sure that if the Solve It QR Ang Bao is torn out of frustration, the receiver will still not be able to scan the QR code in low contrast.

Colour It was relatively easy to execute as it involves inverting of fill to become outline. As the QR of the DBS QR Ang Bao is relatively small, when we blew it up to fill an A4 sheet and image traced it, the QR turns out to be quite an eye sore due to the rough edges. Majority of the time was spent on cleaning up the lines. As we noticed that if we were to only invert the fill to create outline, the kids receiving the sheet might colour the wrong areas. As such, a low contrast fill was added to guide the receiver the exact areas for colouring.

Step 06:

Showing Our Work

View the work here!