Skip to main content

JanSport’s latest backpack is basically one giant QR code

You may well consider QR codes as a relic of a past digital age, but leading bagmaker JanSport is having none of it.

The company has recently developed a backpack that acts as a kind of QR code so the wearer can share stuff like their favorite music video or an Instagram profile or website.

Recommended Videos

The backpack — part of a project aimed at repurposing fabrics as programmable devices — is currently a prototype and could be a new way for people to share interests instead of adorning their bags with stickers and patches, CNN reports.

Steve Munn, president of JanSport Americas, said that while a backpack is primarily “a place to put something to eat, something to drink and something to wear … now it becomes potentially an avenue for social interaction.”

JanSport partnered with Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Yoel Fink, CEO of Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, to create the special QR-code backpack.

Three hundred of the bags have been produced, each with their own unique design. At the current time, the technology requires a special app to read the bag’s unique “code,” making it rather less useful than typical QR-code technology that works with a slew of existing reader apps.

But it works in a similar way. In other words, if you point your smartphone camera at the bag and take a picture, the app reads the unique code and takes you to online content to which the bag’s owner has already linked.

Munn told CNN that many companies ask him about the possibly of incorporating “complex gimmicks” into bags, but this particular design appealed to him because there’s no physical technology involved, although it still links users directly and quickly to the digital world.

jansport
CNN

While JanSport’s experimental bag may appeal to some, the likelihood is that most people who see it won’t even know it features a connection to the digital world, causing many to ignore it. In that case, the user’s efforts to share online content will prove largely ineffective. With that in mind, a QR-code sticker or patch attached to the bag is likely to prove far more useful.

JanSport’s bag is, however, another indication of how smart fabrics and clothing are gaining traction, with many viewing the technology as the future of wearables.

The company is yet to decide whether to put the backpack on the market, though if it does it won’t be until the end of 2018 at the earliest.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
How does Garmin measure stress, and is it really accurate?
Garmin Vivomove Sport dial close up. Credits: Garmin official.

Garmin watches are known for their robust activity tracking, but that's not all these fitness watches can do. Over the years, the company has been adding wellness features to its lineup of watches. These new health-focused metrics allow people to analyze their fitness and identify outside factors affecting their performance. One such factor is stress, which is something Garmin watches actively measures.
But you may be wondering—exactly how does Garmin measure stress? In this article, we break down how Garmin measures stress and delve into the accuracy of this metric. Should you trust your stress score? Read on to find out.

Is Garmin's stress score accurate?

Read more