7 Things we Learned about how People use Camera Glasses
This article summarizes a paper authored by Taryn Bipat (University of Washington and Snap Inc.), Maarten Bos (Snap Inc.), Rajan Vaish (Snap Inc.), and Andrés Monroy-Hernández (Snap Inc.). This paper will be presented at CHI 2019, a conference of Human-Computer Interaction, on Tuesday 7th May 2019 at 11:00 in the session on Experiences with Unusual Form Factors.
Last summer we studied how people who purchased Spectacles — -commercially available camera glasses that enable people to take photos and videos — -use this device in their everyday lives. Participants reported using them primarily for outdoor and water activities, and when hanging out with friends and family. Furthermore, one in three participants reported using them more than once a week.
There is quite a bit of research on early adopters of devices. However, millions of people own wearable devices and use them as part of their everyday life. We were particularly interested in narrowing down on one single form factor (glasses) rather than studying all wearables.
We interviewed 39 participants who owned the device for at least 3 months. We talked with people across the world including the US, UK, The Netherlands, Sweden, Israel, Canada and France. Additionally, we recruited 191 participants to answer an online survey. These participants had been using the device for at least 2 weeks.
What did we learn?
Motivations: People want to record special events, daily life, and even work, literally from their own point of view. They want to do this often to augment or replace other cameras.
Popular scenarios: People most often use their camera glasses in scenarios where smartphones are cumbersome or distracting, where screenless, hands-free capturing might make more sense. These include outdoor activities, traveling, water activities, and hanging out with friends and family.
Frequency: Some people use their devices regularly. For example, 1 in 3 people reported using their camera glasses more than once a week.
Everyday life: People enjoy capturing everyday life with loved ones, “I usually use it when we go out with friends and are just walking around outside.” Some even reported sharing their camera glasses, “I was hanging out with some of my friends, we started passing them around. People were sharing them, cool to see what people are looking at rather than a camera view.”
Special events: For others, usage was linked to special events like going on a hike, or a trip to a water park. They saw novel content as one of the drivers for usage. “I did not want to keep posting the same type of videos of me riding my bike everyday,” said one person in the study.
Authentic content: The glasses allow people to capture authentic content with children because they behave more naturally in front of the glasses than with a camera phone, “playing with my niece, I never imagined I could get her to take a picture […] Kids kind of freeze up when they see a camera, so I get a natural moment.”
Immersive content: People capture immersive content to enable others to feel like “being there.” For example, one person mentioned how one could “hear [their] breathing getting heavier and heavier as [they] climbed” when going on a hike. Another said they use them while sightseeing to “bring people to other places.”
Our study lays the groundwork for future research on camera glasses. We identified a few themes worth exploring further. One important theme is around societal norms and privacy. To support privacy for others in the environment, Spectacles have LED lights signaling when they are recording. As reported in our study, people notice those lights. These signals can be an important step towards establishing societal norms around recording the environment. We look forward to more work in the area of privacy and societal norms, as well as other research on camera glasses.
For more details, read the paper published at CHI 2019. Full citation:
Taryn Bipat, Maarten Bos, Rajan Vaish, and Andrés Monroy-Hernández. 2019. Analyzing the Use of Camera Glasses in the Wild. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2019). ACM, New York, USA.
