You can, of course, stick a steamer as a surprise for Christmas Eve, but a bit of a tech fan can also take a more creative approach. Two ideas for how you can make a surprise with technology.
Idea 1: The scavenger hunt surprise with QR codes
The surprise consists of an artfully wrapped QR code, which the recipient must scan with a smartphone. The QR code takes you to a page that tells you the location of the next QR code, preferably in the form of a Sinterklaas poem or riddle. There you will find the next clue, until you get to the final gift. Each code can, of course, be accompanied by its own embarrassing poem, command or riddle.
How do we do that?
In fact, this surprise is nothing more than a simple website, where each assignment is its own page. You can read here how to easily create your own website.
Once your website is finished and online, you can create your own QR code for each page. There are several free programs that can do this for you, but Cyber Chef is a good option.
Print the QR codes as stickers and stick them in the correct locations. Always test whether you have the correct QR code, otherwise your surprise will be ruined.
Idea 2: The electric fortune teller
Do you know someone who has always wanted to be a fortune teller? With this surprise you temporarily give them ‘psychic’ gifts, with which they have to discover where their gift has gone. We do this with the help of a number of NFC tags, a handful of poems and a smartphone that supports NFC (Near Field Communication, comparable to Bluetooth but with a shorter range).
The gift belongs to one of the guests, and the only way to find it is to read their mind. The guests come one by one to the fortune teller and give them an object, for example their drinking glass. The fortune teller can then reveal something embarrassing, preferably in the form of a poem – until the ‘thief’ is found.
How do we do that?
Since your friends and family probably aren’t quite psychic, you’ll need to lend them a hand with NFC tags. These are stickers on which you can store a small amount of data that can be read with most modern smartphones.
Come up with some fun facts about your guests. Put those facts into a short and funny poem and save it as a .txt file. You should have one file per guest. You then use your smartphone to write each poem to an NFC tag. You can use a free app like NFC Tools for this iPhone or Android to use.
Then attach the tags to your guests’ belongings – the bottom of a glass or cup is a good, readily available spot.
All the fortune teller needs to do now is hold these objects up to a smartphone and they will be shown the poem in question.
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