Google has never been a design-forward company, revolutionizing our lives through interface design. Instead, they’ve taken over the world building products with raw intellectual horsepower–brilliant artificial intelligence to fuel search, wise mapping systems to take us from point A to point B, and clever cloud-syncing apps that allow us to collaborate on projects from around the globe. Google never had to be pretty. It’s always been smart. No wonder that in a fast paced world where development and innovation have become the order of the day it seems Google is championing this drive to capture the world and make eliminate the restrictions associated with distance and physical barriers, within the last year, Google has ventured into a wide range of products and services some of which include:
Chromebook: This is one of the latest in a series of Google Based Laptops
Chrome OS: This operating system is built to compete favorably with the likes Windows and Linux, this operating system is built to operate using Cloud technology (Where unlike haven’t files, folders and applications been installed locally on your system, they are hosted in cyberspace ensuring you have access to all your resources anywhere in the world that has an internet connection.
Android Icecream Sandwich: Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is the latest version of the Android platform for phones, tablets, and more. It builds on the things people love most about Android — easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity — and adds powerful new ways of communicating and sharing.
Smart Cars: Smart cars is a revolution that was once thought to belong to the science fiction movies but in 2012, we saw Google successfully run its first successful test on an “un-manned vehicle”. This landmark was achieved by Google through ensuring that they capitalize on the power of GoogleMaps. As at the beginning of this year, certain companies have already shown interest in having that technology used in their coming brands.
Google officially revealed a project that will push them to their creative limits. It’s called Project Glass, and it’s a pair of glasses that layers digital information over the real world. In other words, It’s your smartphone, right in your eyes. You can read text messages. You can take photos. You can listen to music (thanks to some built-in earbuds). You can even be told if a current route is closed as you walk or drive up to it, and be redirected to your destination. It’s your smartphone, right in your eyes. So where does this leave us for now?
What Google has shown is promising, but their design challenges are clear:
1. Readability
But on the down side, like with every experimental product there still exist a few bugs to work out for instance text displays are only as good as your ability to read what’s written on them. Wearable displays like Google Glass will free you from looking down at your smartphone to read tweets. But that only works if the text stands out from the constantly changing background – one minute a dimly lit room, the next a bright blue sky – as you walk along. This issue has already been resolved by Jason Orlovsky and colleagues at Osaka University in Japan, they have developed a text display algorithm that places the current message – a tweet, your location or your walking speed, say – on the darkest region in view at any given moment and in a readable color. This is done using the headset’s camera, which plots a constantly changing heat map of viable on-screen reading locations. The algorithm can also split up a message into two small dark regions either side of your field of view. “Twitter feeds or text messages could be placed throughout the environment in a logical manner, much like signs are placed on either side of a street,” the developers say.
2. Google Needs To Navigate “The Always On Problem”
As inspiring as moments in Google’s concept video may be–and the photo-taking moment is an aha moment if I’ve ever seen one–it’s also stuffed with notification, none of which is fundamentally different from what we could be checking on our cell phones less intrusively. The functions that Google blocks will be as integral to the platform’s success as those that are enabled. Finding the perfect level of obtrusiveness within an omnipresent Internet connection could be the largest challenge of human-device interaction the electronics industry has ever encountered. And as Google is paving new ground, they’re working outside their comfort zone: Google has no data to mine for how much notification is too much notification. If ever there’s been a product ripe for Google Labs field testing, it’s this Project.
3. Google Needs to Find A Killer Use-Case
People in Silicon Valley used to talk all the time about finding “killer apps”–that is, the one, defining use of a technology that will spark its mass adoption. And no wonder: With technologies such as augmented reality and Project Glass, the possibilities seem to outstrip the actual need. As I suggested before, these glasses aren’t yet doing anything our phones can’t. So why do they need to be glasses? A good counter-example is the iPad. Lots of people dismissed it when it first came out, saying, “Sure, it’s cool, but what does anyone need another computer for?” Well, it turns out, people didn’t need another computer so much as they wanted one–a computer that would make surfing the web from your bed or couch a lot less clunky and more fun. With Project Glass, I’m not sure that they have that use-case yet–that is, the perfect scenario where this just makes sense in people’s lives. There might be some set of features and interactions that makes it so, but these haven’t quite appeared just yet.
4. Google Needs To Attenuate “The Too Much Feedback Problem”
Where Project Glass is at now, what one spokesperson labelled “the feedback gathering phase” in our brief conversation today, is a tenuous spot to be in. Crowd-sourcing can create great products, but when it comes to inventing something that no one has conceptualized before, we need bold visionaries, not naysaying Internet whiners. Not just anyone can design a user interface. And I’d posit that almost no one can design a usable interface that will sit in our eyeballs 24/7. Crowd-sourcing user feedback at the invisible level–the advanced A/B testing Google does when they test the color blue without us even knowing it–could be integral to fine tuning Project Glass at a number of levels. But at heart, they will need to present us with a most singular vision if they expect any of us to don a pair of glasses, not a mishmash of suggestions from the peanut gallery.
5. People who already wear recommended Glasses
Another challenge that is anticipated is how Google intends to address its market share of people who already wear recommended glasses to aid their vision. Would this technology be adaptable for any kind of glasses in the nearest future, could the technology be an attachment that can be used to transform any pair of glasses into a Google power glasses.
At the end, softest touches of design and customizability will define Project Glass’s future. The little things, the softest touches of design, will define Project Glass’s future in the marketplace. Is the interface loud or quiet? Do we use vocal commands with some functions or all functions?
Are notifications really in the center of the screen, or can they be repositioned? Will images be opaque or partially transparent? What will the glasses show when I sit at my computer or when I drive? All of these “how does it feel” components will matter even more than they do in a cell phone. But on top of all this, and maybe most importantly, we’ll need to know the one big reason that we’ll all want to wear our phones rather than keep them tucked away in our pockets. As of right now, I don’t think we’ve seen it.
In the next couple of months we are sure to see a drastic change in the overall concept as Google recently started its beta testing phase where selected members of the public would be given the opportunity to test and report on feed backs. How this technology would work in Nigeria is still yet to be determined, but if a know the Nigerian market, one thing is certain in the next couple of months after launch the Nigerian market is set to explode with varying sporty glass wears in most gadget stores.
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