What happens when your product concept gets announced at Google I/O a few years later?
How do you respond when a Product concept you envisioned ~3 Years ago sees the light of the day as the latest Google Glass prototype @ Google I/O 2022!!
Well, let’s go back to the summer of 2019, back in Beijing, where it all started:
Having led the product for U-Dictionary app NetEase Youdao, one of the leading translation apps in major emerging markets, from 0 to soon to be 100M Users (that’s a post for another day), I was thinking, what’s next?
My team was considering various hardware products to address customer needs for whom mobile devices may not be the most accessible choice. In the Chinese market, seen as a harbinger of consumer innovations late, there were portable translation devices for enterprise customers, a dictionary “pen” for school students to scan words for meaning through OCR, and a few others.
While these were successful within the respective customer segments, there wasn’t a device that solved the needs of international travelers and traders. And so, I decided to dig deeper into the customer pain as part of the Beijing Startup Grind Ideathon. One such prospective customer was an Indian trader importing textile machinery from factories in Tier 2 & 3 cities in China and talked about the challenges of relying on translation apps for closing the deal. His biggest pains were around real-time communication & signing contract documents in Chinese, and the experience was quite cumbersome with mobile apps.
Further, as an international student turned professional in China, I faced challenges of my own, unable to comprehend a few words during my travels to smaller towns and cities in China or to search for a building sign where I was meeting someone.
Since I experienced the pains that the trader faced during his travels to China, my spidey product instincts were aligned well, so I designed a concept for a smart glass that will instantaneously translate both text and audio with the text overlayed in Augmented Reality. The aptly called Travelation Smart AR glasses were born. You can check the teaser here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaEJsnKh1s0
Further, based on my market research, International Traders and Consultants had the most pertinent need to solve the real-time translation for text & audio, especially while closing deals during their foreign travels. My pitch for Travelation won at the Startup Grind Beijing Ideathon in 2019 !!!
Charged by the win, I kickstarted my deep dive into Augmented Reality through an MS in Tech Ventures at Carnegie Mellon University. Further, I decided to pursue the concept through my startup Brick.ai. Moreover, I planned to gather customer feedback during the Olympics in Japan in 2020. However, since international travel halted, I had to pivot my startup (which went through multiple pivots, also another post!)
Now, fast forward to the current day — I am exhilarated by the announcement about the new Google Glass prototype, which talks about the pain of a mother and daughter, both of whom have to translate Chinese and English. I am glad that the concept that I envisioned sees another day through Google Glass 2.0 and will impact the lives of customers and business professionals globally. I am rooting for its success. are you? Let me know in the comments below.
Check out TechCrunch’s post about Google Glass’s successor here:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/11/google-glasss-successor-teased-at-i-o/
