4 ms·

After trying google glass out last week, it still has a long way to go. Many tech people lined up to try it out. All of us failed to do anything useful with it.

by nahname 13y ago

After trying google glass out last week, it still has a long way to go. Many tech people lined up to try it out. All of us failed to do anything useful with it. We had to be told how to activate it. We had to be told what we could do with it. What phrases it keys off of ('Okay glass'). These were all highly technical people and we couldn't figure it out on our own. Contrast that with a few christmas' ago when I left my iPad out and found my dad watching aeroplane videos on youtube. He didn't know what an ipad is (or youtube for that matter). Yet, he still managed to find something he could appreciate with it with no guidance. Us tech savvy people couldn't figure out how to turn google glass on. Those with glasses could barely see it even when it was.

nsns 13y ago
And yet, a whole series of such "unintuitive" devices is what led to the iPad.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  And note that Apple was not the inventor of any of those unintuitive devices. Which makes one wonder who will ultimately make the "iPad of Glass." :)
  - PuercoPop 13y ago
    Yep, the newton is nothing of the sort :-P
    - codeulike 13y ago
      FWIW A good quote from Jeff Atwood "Think of Glass as the Apple Newton of wearable tech". In ten years time we'll be chatting to these glasses like its the most natural thing in the world.
canthonytucci 13y ago
>All of us failed to do anything useful with it. We had to be told how to activate it. We had to be told what we could do with it. If I'm going to wear something on my head like a nutcase, I would hope that it has been designed for _usability_ not _Discoverability_. Making everything idiot-proof or at least "didn't bother to read the manual proof" leaves us with only devices suited for idiots and people too lazy to read the manual. EDIT: That said....I'm not going to wear something on my head like a nutcase, because no matter how cool it is, I'm too shy/vain/self conscious to do so. The only people willing to wear glass I would bet are people who are wiling to learn to use something to get the most benefit out of it (I would bet a huge overlap with emacs and vim users).
- potatolicious 13y ago
  > "leaves us with only devices suited for idiots and people too lazy to read the manual." Devices "suited for idiots and people too lazy to read the manual" have, in the past decade, driven massive growths in computing, made it more accessible to more people, changed the landscape of the entire world, and even fueled a few revolutions. But by all means, when people need to read a book just to use a device, we'll consider it a badge of honor instead of a failure of design.
  - canthonytucci 13y ago
    > Devices "suited for idiots and people too lazy to read the manual" have, in the past decade, driven massive growths in computing, made it more accessible to more people, changed the landscape of the entire world, and even fueled a few revolutions The touch devices I assume you're referring to are intuitive because as a human you're naturally good at using your hands to make things move around. Push a button and it acts like a button, push a thing that looks like a sheet of paper and it moves in a way that you would expect a paper on your "real" desk in front of you to move. They're "idiot proof" because we've been trained to use them most of our lives. >But by all means, when people need to read a book just to use a device, we'll consider it a badge of honor instead of a failure of design. Glass is something we interact with through an entirely alien interface and potentially an extremely powerful tool. I'm not talking about a podcast app, but a head mounted computer you might potentially be using for hours at a time. Unless you eat a lot of acid, you're probably not familiar with how to interact with imaginary things that float in space before you. To me, "they had to tell me how to use it" is a much weaker complaint than "it was easy but tedious to use" for something that sits on the side of your head. This blog post, and the ones it links to, do a much better job of exploring this than I could here: http://haacked.com/archive/2008/11/06/usability-vs-discoverability.aspx http://haacked.com/archive/2008/11/06/usability-vs-discovera... (somewhat relevant and fun top gear segment on the evolution of car interfaces) http://www.streetfire.net/video/125-top-gear-first-modern-car_187343.htm http://www.streetfire.net/video/125-top-gear-first-modern-ca...
chinpokomon 13y ago
The UI may initially take some time, but not any more than learning how to use a pencil the first time. Glass feels unlike anything you've used before because it is. That said, my experience at Google I/O, I figured out how to use it very quickly and I thought the interface was intuitive as I navigated. Using the touchpad on Glass is more like using a smartphone before touchscreens. It feels a little disconnected in that it is indirect control, but when Blackberries only had a jog wheel, millions of users had no problem using those devices. Given that Glass doesn't have a launcher like most Android devices, the real challenge will be in actively using Glass. Passive use, whereby you are connected to applications using the Mirror API, means that you just receive notifications pushed by remote services, and if you don't respond to a card, it just gets pushed down the stack. You can navigate backwards to find those cards again, but just as you don't respond to every Facebook post, you can just let them flush out and choose to ignore it. The two problems that have to be resolved, are how do you control "native" applications, built using the GDK, and how do you control the flood of extraneous information when you might subscribe to tens or hundreds of services that send you messages through the Mirror API. While you can control what notifications you receive, it would be very easy to subscribe to "important" services and still feel overwhelmed by notifications that aren't particularly interesting just so that you do receive the notifications that you do care about. Culling this stream into something more useful is where some of the AI research may also pay off. It is a difficult balance to figure out today, but as this tech evolves, I have no doubt this problem can be solved too.
rogerbinns 13y ago
When mice first came out for PCs, they included training software for how to use them. Earlier versions of Android used to include intro software for the same reason. In retrospect drag and drop, pinching, double clicks, long holds, swipes, acceleration etc are all obvious. But at one point they weren't.

by nahname 13y ago

nsns 13y ago

And yet, a whole series of such "unintuitive" devices is what led to the iPad.

enraged_camel 13y ago
And note that Apple was not the inventor of any of those unintuitive devices. Which makes one wonder who will ultimately make the "iPad of Glass." :)
- PuercoPop 13y ago
  Yep, the newton is nothing of the sort :-P
  - codeulike 13y ago
    FWIW A good quote from Jeff Atwood "Think of Glass as the Apple Newton of wearable tech". In ten years time we'll be chatting to these glasses like its the most natural thing in the world.

canthonytucci 13y ago

>All of us failed to do anything useful with it. We had to be told how to activate it. We had to be told what we could do with it. If I'm going to wear something on my head like a nutcase, I would hope that it has been designed for _usability_ not _Discoverability_. Making everything idiot-proof or at least "didn't bother to read the manual proof" leaves us with only devices suited for idiots and people too lazy to read the manual. EDIT: That said....I'm not going to wear something on my head like a nutcase, because no matter how cool it is, I'm too shy/vain/self conscious to do so. The only people willing to wear glass I would bet are people who are wiling to learn to use something to get the most benefit out of it (I would bet a huge overlap with emacs and vim users).

potatolicious 13y ago
> "leaves us with only devices suited for idiots and people too lazy to read the manual." Devices "suited for idiots and people too lazy to read the manual" have, in the past decade, driven massive growths in computing, made it more accessible to more people, changed the landscape of the entire world, and even fueled a few revolutions. But by all means, when people need to read a book just to use a device, we'll consider it a badge of honor instead of a failure of design.
- canthonytucci 13y ago
  > Devices "suited for idiots and people too lazy to read the manual" have, in the past decade, driven massive growths in computing, made it more accessible to more people, changed the landscape of the entire world, and even fueled a few revolutions The touch devices I assume you're referring to are intuitive because as a human you're naturally good at using your hands to make things move around. Push a button and it acts like a button, push a thing that looks like a sheet of paper and it moves in a way that you would expect a paper on your "real" desk in front of you to move. They're "idiot proof" because we've been trained to use them most of our lives. >But by all means, when people need to read a book just to use a device, we'll consider it a badge of honor instead of a failure of design. Glass is something we interact with through an entirely alien interface and potentially an extremely powerful tool. I'm not talking about a podcast app, but a head mounted computer you might potentially be using for hours at a time. Unless you eat a lot of acid, you're probably not familiar with how to interact with imaginary things that float in space before you. To me, "they had to tell me how to use it" is a much weaker complaint than "it was easy but tedious to use" for something that sits on the side of your head. This blog post, and the ones it links to, do a much better job of exploring this than I could here: http://haacked.com/archive/2008/11/06/usability-vs-discoverability.aspx http://haacked.com/archive/2008/11/06/usability-vs-discovera... (somewhat relevant and fun top gear segment on the evolution of car interfaces) http://www.streetfire.net/video/125-top-gear-first-modern-car_187343.htm http://www.streetfire.net/video/125-top-gear-first-modern-ca...

chinpokomon 13y ago

The UI may initially take some time, but not any more than learning how to use a pencil the first time. Glass feels unlike anything you've used before because it is. That said, my experience at Google I/O, I figured out how to use it very quickly and I thought the interface was intuitive as I navigated. Using the touchpad on Glass is more like using a smartphone before touchscreens. It feels a little disconnected in that it is indirect control, but when Blackberries only had a jog wheel, millions of users had no problem using those devices. Given that Glass doesn't have a launcher like most Android devices, the real challenge will be in actively using Glass. Passive use, whereby you are connected to applications using the Mirror API, means that you just receive notifications pushed by remote services, and if you don't respond to a card, it just gets pushed down the stack. You can navigate backwards to find those cards again, but just as you don't respond to every Facebook post, you can just let them flush out and choose to ignore it. The two problems that have to be resolved, are how do you control "native" applications, built using the GDK, and how do you control the flood of extraneous information when you might subscribe to tens or hundreds of services that send you messages through the Mirror API. While you can control what notifications you receive, it would be very easy to subscribe to "important" services and still feel overwhelmed by notifications that aren't particularly interesting just so that you do receive the notifications that you do care about. Culling this stream into something more useful is where some of the AI research may also pay off. It is a difficult balance to figure out today, but as this tech evolves, I have no doubt this problem can be solved too.

rogerbinns 13y ago

When mice first came out for PCs, they included training software for how to use them. Earlier versions of Android used to include intro software for the same reason. In retrospect drag and drop, pinching, double clicks, long holds, swipes, acceleration etc are all obvious. But at one point they weren't.