On top of it, is the future of HCI in devices that you have to talk to? (Siri, Glass) Not only do I have a very hard time getting any voice recognition to understand my non native accent (beyond common phrases), having to talk to your devices is an extremely unnatural thing for me to do, unless I'm in private.
These devices may be futuristic, but this is not the revolutionary future.
Sadly, Glass understands me 1/2 of the time. In fact, sometimes it even misinterprets "OK Glass". This has left me at an impasse, because this is mostly a voice recognition device while only having access to GlassWare.
Another interesting side effect: do you know the ghost vibrations from using a cellphone? After wearing Glass for 15-25 minutes, I have this ghost-like feeling that I am still wearing them. It can be disorienting once I remove them.
One tip that might help you is that you never have to say OK Glass anyway. Just tap the thing once to wake it up, then tap again to go to the voice commands instead of saying OK Glass. Or tap and hold for Google direct.
People claim I don't have an accent, but I still have to make each word clearly separate for the device as well. So make sure you are doing that. I've worked with voice recognition that blows this stuff away, hopefully Google will license better technology like Dragon or Nuance, theirs is pretty much the worst I've ever used and I don't think it has any sense of context or the complete sentences I'm saying at all.
Of course, this is an early iteration of the concept, but I see it as a game changer. Imagine removing the HUD from all of your video games. That experience sucks.
Now imagine a world where we can combine quantified-self computing, augmented reality, and new interface devices such as Thalmic MYO with the Glass...that future is a future I very much want to live in.
However so far all that does seem pretty easy to avoid, at least in your personal life, so I'm not extremely worried about it (gamification in the workplace may be harder to avoid, depending on your job and job options).
What I had not thought about was the privacy implications, and the more I think about it, the less happy I feel about people with it on all the time.
Part of me feels this fear is irrational, as I don't have a problem with people taking video with their cell phones. However, this deep-seated aversion to it seems more due to the it-might-always-be-on aspect -- similar to how most of us are OK with the idea of wiretaps when warranted, yet flip out about the recent intelligence news.
Penny Arcade and some other articles I've read have really reinforced the perspective that people will want to punch me in the face for using Glass. I think Glass's biggest hurdle will not be the prospect of looking silly, but of all of your friends saying "Turn that damn thing off before I break it".
Let's imagine a world where you sign up for discounts on certain goods in exchange for allowing your Glass to randomly take pictures throughout the day. This data is mined and tagged and sorted, until one day the .gov or .mil or some hacker decides to pull it and use it for nefarious purposes.
The fact is that the nerd fantasy of getting a HUD (to track what, exactly? Ammo? Health? Some numbers in a database you've been trained to equate with self-worth?) is not worth the societal cost of losing privacy.
"But we've already got smartphones with cameras!" doesn't work--the camera is there, and likely just a change of app policy away from being always on.
This is such a shortsighted idea.
There are at least two reasons stuff like that doesn't occur: 1) The cost of recording, storing, parsing, and analyzing all that data far outweighs any sort of tangential benefit a company may get from such a policy. That's on top of the massive PR risk. 2) The number of people that might sign up for privacy invasion in the interest of a 2 for 1 Big Mac would be so insignificant as to not constitute any sort of grand 'societal loss of privacy'.
Which is a shame in a way. If Glass turns out to be compelling it might have been the reason for me to sign up for a Google account. Now, no way.
Glass is a wet dream for intelligence services. I would have expected these two topics to influence each other much more. Is it because there are indeed two disjoint HN populations (or rather n disjoint populations), or because some of a nerd's aggravation is easily soothed by the latest cool gadget?
Disclaimer: I find Glass fascinating and creepy at the same time, so I could fully understand the latter possibility.
In the first instance, I'm excited and can expect rational discussion. In the second, I'm more or less indifferent and certainly not masochistic.
I'll add another datapoint: the new MS XB One is also another intelligence services wet dream, and is yet another fascinating but creepy product.
Why are all the new hot products giant spying devices? For my part I'd be much more thrilled with the concept of Glass if it did NOT have a camera. I want an assistant, not an overseer.
Maybe you shouldn't read articles about new products, if they anger you so much.
Google Glass is the calculator watch of the 90s. But instead of the a pallet of buttons on a writst, you now have a camera affixed to your face.
If QR scanning was a first class citizen and I could just look at it and instantly get the information, I can see QR being used by real people.
This goal seems far less noble since unveiling Google Glass.
Search has a very long way to go and they can be moving much faster than they currently are.
Ha! So much for Google setting their own precedent on quality.
Google is shooting themselves in the foot appealing to reviewer's worst sense of self-importance. Concierge service and complementary Champagne?
And these reviews! They're so painfully rote: wifi-bluetooth-battery-life-sucks-now-you-can-check-your-email-in-the-middle-of-a-conversation-needs-more-iterations-here-are-some-shitty-pictures-of-a-buffet.
Is this really the future?
Works for Apple: http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion
for consumer uses, i hope the future is not glass. people should interact with people. today our phones can go in our pockets and we can talk face to face. with glass, we'll talk in this order: face -> glass -> glass -> face.
i do want important info to be surfaced when i need it, but i don't need it as a HUD. a voice in my ear, or perhaps even something as futuristic as just "knowing" that i need to make a left at the next light since the computer has informed the right part of my brain of that.
but please, i don't want to have to compete with glass for your attention.
http://cineplex.media.baselineresearch.com/images/312162/312...
I can almost hear the author patting himself on the back for writing that last sentence. If the future is making existing solutions to first world problems slightly more convenient, I'm not interested in being a part of it.
Computers will get smaller and smaller and fade into the backgrounds of our lives. Human Computer Interaction will become be highly centered on touch, gestures, and speach. Not because they have some amazing technical advantage, but because that is how we interact with other humans.
Google glass is a step in that direction, but ultimately just a prototye device that tests a few ideas out. This is not the winning idea that people want it to be and that Google wishes it was. You can cout out wide adoption and you can count out revolutionizing anything, because at the end of the day, it does not fade into the background. What it will do is provide some good feedback (as any beta product will) to all of us for honing the future of wearable devices and computing in general.
Unboxing is not interesting to me. Overly-cheery reps are not an experience. Touring a near-empty facility rivals staring at pictures online. My wife's comment summed it up: "You just looked disappointed the whole time."
Yet, don't discredit the device. There are amazing chances to improve people's lifestyles. There will be niches to help navigate people through life in otherwise impossible-to-assist situations. The to be educated/educators, handicapped, autistic, businesses and many others may find new approaches to life through a device like this.
This is a problem of focus and attention, not an interface problem. If you play with your phone when you're supposedly spending time with friends, glass is just going to make this significantly worse (because now you're looking towards me but still scrolling through your FB feed).
"And with Google Now, you know how bad the traffic is and how long your ride home is going to be without having to ask for it." I use a better solution today. Waze has routed me around traffic jams with amazing success, and it didn't cost me anything (since I already invested in my smartphone).
Everything I've read on glass so far seems to be taking some big leaps to justify the device. As others have said, it will lead us towards some interesting solutions eventually, but it is definitely not the best solution to ANYTHING.
Privacy issues when Glass users record every interaction they have (and potentially post to their social networks). Capturing my daugther's first words is sweet. Capturing my naked partner could be different. No need to hold up a phone -- very convenient. And it will surely all be there on the web.
Glass also could further the trend towards self-indulgent isolation and distraction. Are looking at me or reading mail? Texting while driving is bad, reading tweets and viewing images while driving (all hands free) will be worse.
People already spend too much time photographing/capturing experiences instead of actually experiencing them. Glass will accentuate this. The goal in life should be to live in the present, not record for posterity. And frankly, I have my own life; I don't want to share every bit of yours...
In fact, I am scared to death every time technology like this appears. I know it will be misused, it will become another instrument for hurting people. Or at least as long as we will tolerate it. And we will. It's what we (smart people) are good at. Tolerating. Coping. Working around. Fixing things for ourselves, mocking others who don't understand how.
What do I see in Google Glass? More behavioural programming via advertisements and/or information manipulation. Further corrosion of privacy (of others, wearers can turn them off). New symbol of higher social class, even more prominent than a smartphone.
Yeah, mock me.
A future controlled by one company.
I recall that being something people were terrified of when it was Apple in the driving seat, but I guess Google is Open and is only focused on what's best for the end user, so it's all fine.
