Why Google Glass was bad and how we tried to fix it.
When Google X first announced Google Glass, the internet was stunned. No forum, tech-blog or community could resist talking about it. The hype was huge, probably one of the biggest hypes ever.
Things went bad when Google applied a wrong marketing strategy to this hype. In April 2012, the first announcement was published, but until April 2014, Google did not release the product to the public. Meanwhile, the media continued criticizing Google Glass.
It’s like waiting for something amazing to happen to you, while others who have already experienced it are telling you it is going to suck. — Ton Smets
How Glass was first published.
The first glimpse of Glass was released in April 2012. It was a 2-minute video showcasing what a ‘smartphone on your head’ could do. The video was recorded in first-person, showing how ‘Google Glasses’ added a layer of augmented reality over your normal vision.
In the end, this probably also caused shit to hit the fan. Another ingredient for the recipe of disappointment: Google Glass didn't cover your entire vision, like an Oculus Rift would. Even today, when I offer people to wear Glass, they are surprised the screen was quite a lot smaller than the first video suggested.
The interaction-design wasn’t pleasing either. Because of its touchpad on the side, you had to raise your hand to perform gestures. And then there’s the problem of public areas: you have to speak to Glass. You don’t want others to overhear the conversations you have with your spouse.
On the other hand, Glass clearly holds a promise. This is mostly caused by its position. Because you wear Glass on your head, features like the camera and microphone hold a lot of potential.
This in turn inspired Greenhouse Group Labs to investigate if the potential features of Glass neutralize its flaws.
Judging a prototype.
Google Glass was a prototype, not a consumer-ready product. And for a prototype, it was quite polished. When it worked, it worked pretty good and it had quite a few amazing applications, and kickstarted a new industry.
For the past year, we worked together with Greenhouse Group on learning about Glass’ flaws and advantages. We weren’t surprised on what we found out.
- Poor battery-life
- Sub-par performance
We noticed that we experience these two issues on other devices too, like our Smartwatches and Smartphones. The thing is; they are pretty much the same device, but in a different shape and worn on a different spot.
So, instead of moving these issues over our bodies, let’s fix them.
Our solution: Distributing hardware across devices, like a desktop PC.
Because Google Glass lacks processing power and battery-life, but has a screen at an excellent location, we disabled most of Google Glass’ hardware-features, except for the display. This in order to increase battery life.
Just like Google Glass, a Smartwatch also lacks on the battery- and performance-side of things. The advantage of a smartwatch is also its position on your body. Because it is on your wrist, it is perfect to be used as an input-device, using its touchscreen.
The smartphone has by far the most processing power, so we will be using it as a brain for executing the actual tasks. This varies from sending a text to performing more complex calculations, like processing images.
We call this concept Heartbeat.
Let’s talk about design.
Because of our concept of distributed hardware, we decided to create a simple prototype and a new user experience. Because we wanted the system to still be user friendly, we designed a new user interface for Google Glass and the Smartwatch that would make use of the capabilities of our platform.
We divided the screen of Google Glass in three columns. The first column contains various actions, the second column contains parameters for the action defined in the first column. The third column is merely a confirmation-icon. With a simple gesture, actions can be performed.
On the smartwatch, using simple gestures, actions can be performed by drawing a shape that looks much like a heartbeat on a heartrate-monitor. Hence our concept-name. With this design, users can perform gestures without looking at their watch, as movements are directly visible on Glass’ screen.
Our prototype in Node.js.
We started with a HeartBeat-class. It contains various variables and functions that are specific for our platform. It keeps track of connected devices and pings them to make sure they are still connected. It also handles the user-interface. The communication between various devices is done with Socket.io, as it is almost latency-free.
Our project is open source and kind-of documented, so take a look at our project on GitHub.
Theoretical results.
Smartphone: Estimated 34% longer battery-life
Total battery
- Screen-usage
- Camera-usage
- Other hardware
================
Total increase: 34%
This percentage was calculated with the Android-battery manager’s data. We calculated the total amount of energy used by the screen itself and the CPU-time used by the surfaceflinger-services. The power used by buttons is negligible. We then subtracted the energy used by the virtual-machine that hosts our Node.js process on the smartphone.
Smartwatch: Estimated 24% shorter battery-life
Total battery
+ Screen-usage
===============
Total decrease: 24%
24% shorter battery-life isn’t as bad as we expected. Because we now have to enable our smartwatch whenever we want to perform an action, it achieves a slightly lower battery-life. For now, we haven’t found out about a way to disable the screen itself, while leaving the touchscreen on. Further research is needed.
Google Glass: Estimated 23% longer battery-life
Total battery
- Camera-usage
- Third-party CPU-usage
- WiFi-usage
===============
Total savings: 23%
About us.
This concept and prototype was developed by Ton Smets and Mees Boeijen, during an internship at Greenhouse Group Labs in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
We would like to thank Max den Dopper for his continuous support.
Greenhouse Group is an umbrella organisation of six innovative and trend-setting companies in the digital marketing field and new business concepts. Innovation, Dedication and Fun are the core values which are carried out daily by our 170+ dedicated experts.
