Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google relaunches Glass for businesses

blog.x.company

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 281 posts

Re: Google relaunches Glass for businesses

#131

Post by gnaritas »

arbitrage wrote: post #29
kharms wrote: post #8

>>Glass is also helping healthcare professionals. Doctors at Dignity Health have been using Glass with an application our partner Augmedix calls “a remote scribe”. My primary care doctor has a human scribe. The scribe is a recent graduate (BS), planning on going to med school next year. Being physically in the room, watching the doctor work is a great benefit to her. I'm not sure she'd benefit as much from watching a…

I would be totally cool with being recorded. I think its beyond time we get past the ridiculous false modesty that seems to be considered a virtue, but with no real benefit.

The desire for privacy is not "false modesty"; given the sentence you just uttered, I'm not convinced you even know what false modesty even means. People have a hard enough time even talking to doctors about embarrassing or sensitive issues, put a camera in the room and they simply won't, privacy is a need for most human beings, it's not false, it's not fake or done out of a desire to appear a particular way, it's a psychological need. Most people are not exhibitionists, they do not like being watched, they do not like being recorded, and it's not remotely something they do for appearances, a.k.a. false modesty.

Re: Google relaunches Glass for businesses

#132

Post by mafuyu »

Sounds like they've found a great enterprise usecase, and I hope they can keep improving the device to bring it to consumers once again.

I was able to snag a Glass for a good price when they killed support (before selling it off again after a couple months). I enjoyed using it, and being on a college campus at the time reduced some of the social awkwardness. I could push notifications to my face with IFTTT and the voice recognition worked reasonably well. Ironically, I found the most useful feature to be the camera. It's liberating to be able to wink and get a snapshot of whatever is in your field of view, whether it's some info you want to remember or a small moment you want to share. I'm on vacation now and find myself fumbling with my phone to take snaps of interesting things I want to share way too often.

Re: Google relaunches Glass for businesses

#133

Post by kbenson »

toxican wrote: post #125
kbenson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely because the platform he is on is not static, and is likely a standard part for multiple technicians, and possible with more than one on it at a time. It looks like the engine is stationary, and the station moves to where he is needed. If that's the case, they could use some semi-specialized platforms for different uses, some with tables for manuals and parts, some without to accommodate more people at once. Th…

Or maybe they're exaggerating a minor issue to make the product look better like a late night infommercial.

> Or maybe they're exaggerating a minor issue to make the product look better like a late night infommercial.

Sure. I'm not trying to suggest it is an enhancement in the work process, just that it may be even considering the GP's sentiment of "Seems like if the mechanic just had to turn around to access the ring-binder, instead of walking down a flight of stairs, the efficiency difference would be less." by providing additional information that may not have been considered.

Re: Google relaunches Glass for businesses

#134

Post by mpg33 »

aresant wrote: post #9

This is so !@%!@ cool. Check out the A/B test of a technician with / without the software referenced in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5gXuZp25f0 Then here's a video that gives a sense of the software's interface: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5HOHNECW20 Very workflow oriented with nice communication and lookup features. This is the kind of small optimization stuff that is going to be revolutionary…

after using youtube many times to help with car problems I could see this being helpful....or any instructional video in when you are working on something away from a computer..

Re: Google relaunches Glass for businesses

#135

Post by tpeo »

maxerickson wrote: post #109
tpeo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low knowledge tasks aren't a bottleneck in contemporary manufacturing though, at least in so far as "low knowledge" correlates with being easily automated. Tightening a screw or riveting a steel frame for example require little knowledge, but on the other hand they're easily automated. Or rather, more easily automated than reassembling and disassembling an engine.

Yes, that's what I meant. Any productivity gains from a HUD are likely to be in high skill/high information tasks and the article states that so far they were modest.

Oh, I see.

To be fair, there might be some more productivity gains lurking around the corner if augmented reality allows a tighter integration of each process in the factory line.

Any time lost involving searching anything in the factory floor could be reduced with augmented reality by peppering the world with "quest markers".

Besides the 10% gain on searching which parts of the engine you're supposed to either screw in or unscrew out, there might be a gain when searching your wrench, when searching Joe, when trying to find out where exactly the new parts are and so on.

Re: Google relaunches Glass for businesses

#137

Post by aeontech »

oliwarner wrote: post #117

Some of this stuff is so obviously cool but remember the cost of efficiency. 30% time saved means one person does more in their day. This has a personal toll because working less intensively gave you time to think and physically rest. You're at it non-stop now. And that also means you need 30% fewer employees to manage the same workload. That's going to be the trade-off here. How many people will have to go just to o…

> working less intensively gave you time to think and physically rest

I don't buy this argument, honestly. By extension, you're saying we should go back to manual book-keeping instead of computers to do accounting, because it would employ more accountants, and let them work at a more relaxed pace.

Looking up documentation, for example, is not an intellectually demanding task. Instead of going back and forth between printed reference, being distracted, forgetting what you read and having to re-check it, this helps reduce the feedback loop and that makes work more intellectually engaging and interesting because the worker can focus on things that actually require thought, rather than menial tasks.

People will still take breaks and slack off, it's human nature, and they should be able to, if you demand continued unbroken attention, you will end up with people who make a lot more mistakes, I expect (citation needed).

I am much more worried about automated performance metrics and gamification of work, those do offer levers for the employers to push the employees beyond sane limits.

Re: Google relaunches Glass for businesses

#138

Post by frahs »

kbenson wrote: post #105
theptip wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good info there -- but I think I wasn't clear, I was suggesting moving the ring binder onto a table/rack right by the work-space, using something like a music stand. Seems like if the mechanic just had to turn around to access the ring-binder, instead of walking down a flight of stairs, the efficiency difference would be less.

Likely because the platform he is on is not static, and is likely a standard part for multiple technicians, and possible with more than one on it at a time. It looks like the engine is stationary, and the station moves to where he is needed. If that's the case, they could use some semi-specialized platforms for different uses, some with tables for manuals and parts, some without to accommodate more people at once. Th…

You're totally overcomplicating this -- all they need is literally a music stand that they keep with their binders -- when you take a binder out, bring the stand with you to the platform and mount the binder on the stand on the platform, so that you don't have to go back and forth.

Re: Google relaunches Glass for businesses

#139

Post by MarkMc »

kharms wrote: post #8

>>Glass is also helping healthcare professionals. Doctors at Dignity Health have been using Glass with an application our partner Augmedix calls “a remote scribe”. My primary care doctor has a human scribe. The scribe is a recent graduate (BS), planning on going to med school next year. Being physically in the room, watching the doctor work is a great benefit to her. I'm not sure she'd benefit as much from watching a…

The doctor would probably be even more uncomfortable being recorded, for the same reason that cops don't like wearing body cameras: Any mistake is recorded and can be replayed at trial.

As a patient I would be quite happy for doctors and nurses to wear body cameras if it was part of a systematic approach to eliminating errors (similar to the way airplane cockpit voice and data recorders have been instrumental in reducing plane crashes).

Re: Google relaunches Glass for businesses

#140

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #89
tpeo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my reaction... about 3 to 4 years ago when I saw the Epson Moverio BT-100 engine maintenance training demonstration ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVV5tUmky6c ). It's not as sleek as Glass, but it's in the same spirit. Point being that Google isn't quite breaking new ground by selling augmented reality to businesses. Rather, it seems that they're trying to make the most out their Glass product now that it…

It wasn't a consumer product it was a dev kit.

Glass isn't a consumer product either, it is just a dev kit.
Post reply on HN