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by weego 4854 days ago
Making eye contact is the most important part of in-person social interaction, it gives a number of passive and active clues as to the persons intent and emotions.

As neither of us have had any interaction with someone wearing Glass we are both hypothesising, yet I would suggest the number 1 goal was to allow maintaining eye contact when wearing it, and then there were probably some constraints that lead the rest of this initial version, which seems to have been managed.

Whether someone is attentive or not when using it is not the definition of a product. Also, you're entire post really just boils down to hand waving and saying it's all bad.

1 comments

Absolutely correct, that one interaction is not the definition of a product.

But it does greatly affect it. Even talking on the phone has this element of distraction to it—my dad notices this especially. If I start messing around on the computer in the middle of a phone conversation, he can tell immediately and starts asking me what I'm doing on the computer. Good conversation starter, but it didn't help that I was distracted in the first place.

What happens when I get a notification on my Glass when talking to someone in person? What if a text message comes up and I start reading it. What if a random restaurant notification comes up (an ad? Surely not!). There are any number of things this device adds to conversation, while you're holding eye contact. That eye contact becomes not only eye contact, but unknown eye contact. It becomes more disconnected, even in person.

What would you do if someone took out their phone and started reading their messages while you were trying to talk to them? How is that different from Glass? Can Glass tell when you're having a conversation? Maybe it can, but how do we know?

It complexifies conversation. Personally, I don't believe that will be socially accepted. But you're right, we don't know yet. A lot of this is speculation, and of course the device will be refined and the interactions will be honed as time goes on.

That just brings up another point: the product, its use, and how it fits into everyday life are not well defined. It's beginning from an experimental engineering standpoint. More on a fundamental design level, I think that origin has a lower likelihood of leading to the right type of product.

The UI Overview Slashgear wrote up via a leaker(http://www.slashgear.com/google-glass-in-focus-ui-apps-more-...) says that the swipe down gesture on the touchpad takes you up a level within the UI, and swiping down at the topmost level turns off the screen completely.