Smartglasses: How smart are they?
Google first revealed its smart glass in the summer of 2012 and started the distribution of the smart glasses through the Explorer program, which gave software developers the chance to buy Glass for $ 1,500 in 2013. By 2014, it led to a rise in privacy concerns. The term “glasshole” was coined which was used to describe people who did not use Glass in a socially acceptable manner. And even till 2015, the prices remained at the same level, restricting access to a privileged few.
In Jan 2015, Google announced that it would soon end sales of Google Glass as well as kill the Explorer program. Many felt that it’s the end of Glass and some opined that the World wasn’t ready for smart glasses yet. But Google promised to continue working on future versions and many other companies worked on such glasses too like Vuzix, RealWear, Epiphany etc.
By 2017, some of these smart glasses were exclusively launched for enterprises. Since a lot of computing technology gets adopted in enterprises before becoming mainstream with individuals, this approach made sense. When it becomes mainstream is anybody’s guess, but let’s focus on how enterprises are using smart glasses & what it will take for such initiatives to succeed.
A smart glass is like a smart phone on your eyewear albeit with a much smaller screen and limited input options. Smart glasses prove to be very handy in situations where hands-free and ready information access and capture is required. For example, it can be warehouses where workers can access or capture information on packages and move them around. Or audits where auditors can access notes & capture photos or videos of the audit procedure. Or even physicians where they can access patient information as well as capture diagnostic notes. In all these cases, hands-free instant access to information is a big productivity boost.
That begs the question — what are the success factors for smart glasses in enterprises? The answer lies in the difference between a smart phone and a smart glass. In a smart glass, we have a much smaller screen space & limited input options. This means device manufactures and app developers need to be innovative to work around these limitations. There will be two main factors that will aid them in their endeavor. Firstly, User Experience (UX). Manufacturers and developers have to put a great deal of focus on UX to make these devices intuitive and to make best use of the screen space. The information capture through audio & video has to be intuitive so that users adapt to them seamlessly. The second factor would be Machine Learning. Again, the onus lies on both manufacturers & developers to make use of state of the art Machine Learning models to process audio & video inputs. These two factors are going to dictate the speed at which smart glasses are going to be adopted by enterprises.
We, at ValueLabs, are trying a bunch of ideas (under the hood for the time being) on smart glasses. Given our expertise in UX & ML, we have developed some real cool solutions. In fact, we are looking forward to analyzing the productivity gains from one of our most recent pilots.
Well, we may not be far away from the day where everyone will have access to information literally (Ok! Not so literally) on their fingertips. For the time being we are excited to see how enterprises leverage smart glasses.
