Google has never been a design/innovation company, that revolution our lives through interface design or new product. Instead, they’ve taken over the world by a better execution. An execution un match in the industry. not a single company (apple included) can even think to be close to google on that department.
They tried with google wave and many other products to innovate but failed to bring innovation to the market. All success beside Google earth have been bought (youtube, android, gmail,gmap …) and not invented at google.
With Google Glass, google is now trying to invent a new technology to make our life easier. To introduce a new object in our life. It's bold and finally show that google have a vision of the future, instead of "only" execute better.
As a geek/nerd, take my money google, I want it now!
As a Product guy, I think it will be failure. Big Time.
I see numerous major problems with this vision of the wearable computer that I used to work on it 10 years ago.
To cut to the chase, having a google glass make you look like a douche.
here some pictures with a regular guy and even a model :
Same kind of guy that wear a bluetooth headset and talk to them-self in the street. This is a niche market (hopefully!) and not mainstream.
History repeat itself : the segway, the bibop … all failure due to the douche factor.
Though, it's a technical problem that maybe could be resolve by a better technology, in incorporating the screen inside the actual lens like in the "rafale" plane. UI is in the lens not an outside weird block ...As my dad was working on it I had the privilege of testing it and it could be a solution.
■ Glasses reduce your vision range
When you wear glasses, your vision range is reduce quite significantly. With a regular glasses, the range is reduce to a drunk person vision. People wearing glasses go great length to do not wear them by doing surgery or wearing contact lenses.
if you wear glasses like I do, you know what I mean. But regular people that do not wear glasses will not accept that. With Google glass a the upper right corner is now obstructed by "this screen".
In the 80, there was a little trend to wear glasses even you didn't need them, but it was a fad created by the top gun movie … not really mainstream.
■ No mainstream killer usage case yet
Recording a video in POV is great … if you are a surfer, climber or any other sports actually but in the daily life (street,office with noise) it seems to me that it could be useful only a few times per month … and yet you have to wear it all the time.
Furthermore in real situation, in a street with noise I bet that the google voice recognizer will fail to understand any command.
It's maybe too early to call on that one because developers will try to find that holy grail ...
At the end of the day why should I wear 24/7 a heavy glasses just for few usages ?
Google succeed since 10 years to hide (not letting them know) to their users that goggle is earning money by analyzing their activities and selling that to the highest bidder. Indeed most regular people do not know that and think it's just free. Google dodge the bullet on the phone by using the Android brand and again people do not know it's in fact google.
Here with google glass, they go for a google branding. To me, they should brand it without the google name. A recording device of all your life made by a company selling ads ? I don't think it will fly with the general population …
Also, with google glass you can record people without letting them know that you actually record them … and share that on Facebook or g+. I can imagine some awkward usage in the sex department.
So to wrap this up, I think it will be a great goodies for nerd/geek and "sport" enthusiast (me included) but not mainstream device ... but it could restart the wearable computer concept in our industry with stuff more in phase with today technology like a watch, a smart "hearing aid" or other smart rings ...