271–280 of 305 posts
Why would the largest advertising company in the world want to place a screen between my eyeballs and reality?
>“We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input,” the three employees wrote. “Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?” Why would you ask that? This type of product is so different from what's available on the market that I doubt the Project Glass team woul…
I honestly have no idea what stage this project is in. Are they in a phase that's more ideation? Are they refining in their design funnel? I think it's a bit curious to point at an example of a product by one company and say essentially 'They did it this way and were successful, clearly this is how all things should be designed'.
I'm not sure this is an issue of them asking a question analagous to "What do you want the iPhone to do?" so much as it's maybe "How annoying are people who aren't researchers and designers going to find wearing HUD glasses for 3 hours a day?" or "Will people feel uncomfortable using them in pedestrian or cycling settings given that they're voice-activated and pervasive?" Granted, there are maybe analogous products on the market that will maybe inform how people will interact with this new medium, but I have a few years experience interacting with someone using this sort of one-eyed projective displays (my former research advisor wore one) and there are some funny things involved with face to face interaction with someone using them that you might not anticipate. In fact, he felt that the eyepiece was often enough of a social interaction barrier that he'd take his off and tuck it into his shirt pocket when he was having a conversation.
You're not necessarily going to figure these things out in the product design lab. Maybe it's stupid of Google, but I suspect they're trying to better do design for the wild. Alternately, they're just people who don't know how to make products.
When I was young my grandfather got me a pair of augmented reality glasses. They had thick green rims and he also got a pair for my sister, Janine. Her pair had red rims. We put the glasses on right away and boy did they augment! After that we really only took them off to sleep. About three weeks later our family took a trip to New York City. We were looking at all the tall buildings and they were really tall and bea…
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Could your "solved problem" vehicles reliably tell the difference between a kid running into the street and a empty garbage bag blown in the wind?
If you designed the system, would you handle them any differently? A buddy of mine, when he was a kid, used to tie toilet paper across the road at windshield height then hide in the bushes. A car would come along at ~30 mph, see it, then come to a screeching halt. Some would get out and tear it down, some would stomp the gas. Point is, every human stopped for a single strand of toilet paper blocking the road.
Screeching halts have a different effect at higher speeds in denser traffic. People would be less likely to slam on the brakes for a trash bag on the freeway.
But either way it is a dangerous, controversial, split second, human risk calculation. I can't say how I would handle it in advance, much less how a robot car should be programmed to handle ambiguous inputs at highway speed.
There were two key problems - one was the weight (resulting in wearer fatigue), and the other was the refresh rate which caused nausea during prolonged use. Neither of these are significant barriers, and given Moore's Law I wouldn't be surprised if these things are as ubiquitous as smartphones in 5-10 years.
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But remember: a car that can drive for you perfectly well when the weather is fine but that requires you to take the wheel under adverse conditions is still an awesome product as long as the limitations are clear, consistent, and understood by purchasers.
I wonder how well we will handle the adverse conditions when we have been letting the car do all the work in fair weather scenarios? "Google wants me to drive in this weather? I haven't driven for 2 years! Now let me see - where is that indicator stalk?"
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I don't see why everyone should seek to emulate Apple, it's the antithesis of the Valley mentality. Everyone else goes for openness, iteration, and lean mentality, not stealth and secrecy, it rarely works. You can't always design products from the top down. Sometimes you have to run actual experiments and collect data. The Apple aura that they can sit in an ivory tower and perfectly craft things that everyone wants w…
Apple creates bombs all the time: the G4 Cube, iPod Socks, iPod Hi-Fi, iAds. They create enough other things that don't bomb to make up for it. But you're right that Apple's way is only one way, and it's non-obvious how to go about replicating their processes even if you wanted to. If anything should be learned from Apple, it's every aspect of the experience should be considered part of the product, including anticip…
You're already starting to see some of that now. Building excitement is great, but if you over do it, people will be disappointed.
I might be too old to get excited about stuff like this. I suppose if it helped with my work I would use it, but otherwise I really enjoy looking directly at the world.
I might be too old to get excited about stuff like this. I suppose if it helped with my work I would use it, but otherwise I really enjoy looking directly at the world.