Last weekend, I decided to make my savings rain on the google campus and accepted my “invite” to buy a Google Glass. I asked a few people that had tried it before for advice, and they all seemed to either say “meh”, or downright hated the device. But of course, the Glass Explorer Edition is in no way ready for general consumer use. And, unless you are interested in developing new products/services for it, and/or willing to try out a product on the cutting-edge just so you can affect its evolution path, there isn’t much to be gained from it. To be fair, I had already made up my mind before asking around, and there were also a few developer friends of mine that hated it. But, they got to try it before the GDK was made available!

If you aren’t an avid reader, just check out the TL,DR section at the bottom ;)

Getting Glass

I chose to go pick up my Glass in person from Google, instead of having it shipped and twiddling my thumbs constantly while I check UPS delivery status. So, on SantaCon Saturday, the 14th of December, I just woke up! Got out! Tapped my Clipper Card and hopped on the MUNI at Van Ness! Hopped off at Folsom & Embarcadero! Got escorted by Google Security in an eerily empty building behind Palomino’s (it was SantaCon Saturday)… and Voila! I was there!

I entered this room with a minimalistic industrial aesthetic, filled with people wearing the headset. You could easily spot those working for Google vs those that came to pick up their $1500 gadget by the neutral colors the Googlers wore. The space had this eerie 1984 feel to it. I am still not sure whether to call it a utopian glimpse at the future, or a dystopian one. But, it was definitely the future that I was staring at.

A lady asked to check my ID, and then wanted to confirm my choice of Color. I went for Charcoal (aka. dark gray). Afterwards, she pointed me to a fridge and told me to feel free to have any refreshments while I waited for my “Glass Fitter.” They must have stocked the Kool Aid in a separate fridge for employees only. I picked one of those fancy Fiji water bottles, and turned around, and there was my fitter holding my Glass in its packaging, and he insisted that I go through the whole unboxing ritual. Okayyy…

Here’s a pic of the space taken with my Glass:

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The Fit (and My First Impression)

The first thing I noticed about Glass was how surprisingly light it was. The second thing I noticed was, how little I noticed it when I wore it. When you wear it, the prism (similar to ones you find inside a D/SLR) sits just above your line of sight. So, it’s only there when you want to look at it, and doesn’t get in the way of your vision when you don’t. The fitter dude then showed me all the bells and whistles, and how to navigate using touch and voice. The touch surface runs along the frame above your right temple. It’s a bit of a learning curve to get used to the whole touch UX, but once you get the hang of it, the whole swipe down to dismiss and swipe back and forth to go between “cards” kinda makes sense. But, I think Google UX designers still need to re-think the flow of cards in the UI. It’s still unclear at times whether I need to swipe down, or left, or right to get to the home screen.

And, the home screen is where the Glass’ killer feature lies. The “ok glass” voice interface. I’ll get to it later down the article, but we are talking about first impressions here. We set up WiFi on Glass using QRCodes generated through a website (nifty), and when the guy asked me to try searching for something… I said “ok glass, google starbucks near me”, and was presented with a small high-contrast map showing starbucks around me. Then I tried “ok glass google google glass”… and saw some text snippets from Google search results presented in small, yet still readable font.

Did I just spend $1500 only to google something and see the results show up in a really tiny screen?

I was kinda disappointed with it, and could see why others that tried it before me hated it. My only consolation was the ability to tilt my head up to wake up the device and then say “ok glass, take a picture” to take a picture of something I was looking at. Just kidding! I could also press a button to do that without all that head jerking.

I chose not to wear my Glass on the MUNI ride back home, and carried my giant “GLASS” paper bag with the boxes in it. I wasn’t comfortable enough with using it, to wear it out in public. That happened couple of hours later :)

Glasshole Santa

Like I said, it was SantaCon. And what better time to wear my Glass in public than while I’m already looking ridiculous as a brown guy with a black beard wearing a santa suit picked up from Walgreens for $15 :) (Daiso Japan was selling it for $5… Walgreens ripped me off) By now, I had played around with it enough to be able to demo a few things if asked by strangers. And wearing it to SantaCon was more about assessing public reaction, than about actually finding it useful.

Overall, it’s barely noticeable (maybe it was the Santa Suit diverting their attention elsewhere), and when people did notice it, they just seemed curious about it. I made sure to let others try it out as much as possible, just so that they aren’t creeped out by Cyborg Santa, and to allay their fears of me recording their actions constantly. While I was waiting in the lines to get into the bars, I would get a few stares. And usually when I asked them if they wanted to try it out, most people were happy to. And after they did, they became visibly more comfortable with me wearing it around them. This Santa was on a mission to evangelize Glass!

I mainly used the glass to shoot pictures, and record 10 second clips of all the stuff happening around me at SantaCon. I also used it to look up “liquor store” for a failed booze run to fill up our portable flasks while we waited to get into bars (PRIORITIES!). It brought up a map (well, a north-oriented PNG image) of nearby liquor stores, and I was kinda disappointed that it didn’t show the store across the road. But of course, Google knew better! I walked in, and they only sold beer and wine. The other places on the map were too far for me (3 blocks were 2 blocks too far then), and since navigation didn’t work with my iPhone yet… I gave up on it. (Navigation and GPS access works now with iPhone as long as MyGlass app is running…)

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and… Google’s Auto-Awesomed pic :/

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The night wasn’t entirely without incident.

There were a couple of dudes that were drunk and yelled at me to google “spirit of xmas” and chanted “Glasshole! Glasshole!” :) I had to remind them of the term “Glasshole,” and immediately regretted doing so when they started chanting out aloud :/ It’s not because they were actually offended by it somehow… but just because it’s now the hip thing to hate in SF. Remember Peter Shih? Anyway, it wasn’t really that bad. I smiled and hugged one of them, and he confessed that he was also a developer and was just jealous that he hadn’t had a chance to try one yet. I didn’t let him try it that night. Not because he was an asshole about it just 5 seconds earlier… but because he was too drunk, and I didn’t feel comfortable handing over $1500 worth of fragile equipment to a guy that couldn’t handle himself.

Phew! My Glass made it through its first day… Well, at least until I made it. I picked it up at 11AM from Google SF, and around 10pm, I was done for the day (I had a bit too much fun the night before as well, so 10pm is totally excusable). And the battery life on my Glass lasted the entire day… Hooray!

Ok Glass, Show me Google’s NLP Prowess!

The next day, I was still slightly regretting my purchase. But that was until I came across this video on the Glass Explorer Community site:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsMOhLo2IY0

I wasn’t aware Google’s NLP ((That’s Natural Language Processing for the noobs) had come so far. Sure, NLP searches are not just limited to Glass, and can be accessed on any smartphone (iOS, Android, Google Now) or PC… but now suddenly, the “Ok Glass” voice UI made much more sense. Any piece of information I wanted was just a nod of the head and a query away.

“ok glass, google… what’s FB stock at?”

“ok glass, google… what’s 51 times 1300 times 0.66?”

“ok glass, google… how tall is the Eiffel Tower?”

“ok glass, google… where is it?”

“ok glass, google… what’s that movie with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela?”

and the following questions by my 6 year-old nephew, and 8 year-old cousins.

“ok glass, google… how long ago did the dinosaurs die?”

“ok glass, google… how did the dinosaurs die?”

“ok glass, google… how many stars are there in the night sky?”

Yep, it’s Kids Approved!

I wish I didn’t have to say “google” after saying “ok glass” every single time, and that they defaulted to google search for queries that didn’t have an action associated with a GlassWare (What’s a GlassWare you ask? Read along!). I’ll expand on my quirks with the UI in a future post… But you get the idea!

Google’s NLP engine has advanced far enough to make Glass a reality, and to make a believer out of me. And if this is gonna be the future, I better get serious about developing for it!

At least, that was the excuse I used to plunker down more cash and get myself a Nexus 5 for developing on the Android platform (and Glass platform) :) I got it in the mail on thursday, the 19th… Just in time for a bike ride on Saturday.

Ok Glass, Start a Bike Ride!

Google is not the only provider of content and features for Glass. It’s an open platform just like iOS, and Android, and will eventually have a marketplace filled with apps developed by third parties (hopefully, including me). And these apps are what we Glassholes refer to as GlassWare.

Strava is one such app. And, instead of talking too much about it… I’ll let these pictures speak for themselves.

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I wish I could embed videos with this post on tumblr, here’s a link to Google Plus Album containing image and video samples… Not that the videos show the glass UI or anything, but just so you get an idea of what videos look like in motion. You’ll be surprised how good your neck and head are at stabilizing videos :) It ain’t just the chickens! Recording “long” videos comes with a caveat though… it kills the battery FAST! I saw the battery drain almost 20% over a 4 minute long video recording…. Ouch!

One thing I found helpful during my bike ride was to set a low head-wake angle. I set it at 15 degrees. That way, I just had to look a little bit above horizon to check my ride stats. (I wish apps were allowed to set this automatically during use)

Navigation & Notifications

I haven’t tried using navigation for walking around town, since I usually know where I am going. But, I did try it while driving, and the turn-by-turn navigation is surprisingly the best navigation UI I’ve come across.

The display is off most of the time (Of course, if you have head-wake turned on, you can tilt up at any time to see what the next turn is.) Except when there is a turn or an exit coming around soon; At which point, it lights up and shows the mini-map, and isn’t really much of a distraction as you don’t have to take your eyes off the road. If you feel looking up slightly still counts as taking your eyes off the road… just tilt your head down, and look through the glass :)

Here are a couple of pics showing what it’s like to use Glass for Navigation.

Here’s Glass telling me to stay on the bridge :/

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and here it is… asking me to stay left at the fork, after I take the exit to the right :/

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As for most other notifications, they are usually just audible alerts (both while navigating, as well as normally). And, after hearing an alert, if you tilt your head to wake up the display, or tap on the touch surface, you get to see what it is about. Nothing In-Your-Face about it!

Overall Verdict!

It’s definitely got some UX issues, but Glass is the way of the future. $1500+tax well spent :’(

In my next post, I’ll share my thoughts on what’s wrong with the UI as it stands, and how it can be improved. And, maybe share a little info on what I’m building for Glass.

TL,DR; (and Some Specs)

Images and Videos:

Google Plus Album containing image and video samples

Non-Intrusive UI:

Prism sits above line of sight, and doesn’t get in the way of your vision. This is good!

Most notifications are audible (except for stuff like turn-by-turn directions), and you can check what it is by waking up Glass (Head tilt, or tap on touch surface). Nothing’s In-Your-Face! This is also good!

Voice UI:

Google’s NLP is amazing and perfect for Glass! I only wish it was accessible from everywhere. Or at least that there was a way to use voice to go to home screen, which is where the “ok glass” interface is available.

Touch UI:

Other than the swipe down to dismiss, the Touch inteface is… Ahem! Excuse my french!… Confusing as Fuck! I’ll share my thoughts on how to make this better in another post.

Camera:

Surprisingly good. 5MP. Low-light performance is decent for having no flash. Video is shot at 720p. Automatically stops after 10s. Can be extended indefinitely by clicking the camera button again within the 10 seconds. While shooting using “ok glass, take a picture” and “ok glass, record a video” is cool… pressing the physical button is faster, and a lot more reliable :)… Yes, there is a physical Camera button!

Glassware:

There isn’t that much available yet, but there are some really cool ones. Particularly, WordLens and Strava.

Battery Life:

If you aren’t shooting videos, and have a Head-Wake angle of 30 degrees or more (to avoid the screen turning on unnecessarily)… or just have it turned off. It will easily last a day. If you’re constantly recording long videos, don’t expect it to last longer than an hour :)

General Public Reaction:

With clip-on shade, very few people notice it. Without, almost everyone notices it within 30 seconds. Most are curious, and happy to try it on when offered, and more comfortable with it afterwards. Some have a bleak vision of the future. The remainder are vocal assholes about it ;)