This talk focuses on knowing the wearable user experience to properly create experiences that help you stay in the moment. In this case, a very simple wearable application is detailed that lets users update the amount of water they've consumed to their Fitbit profiles, handsfree via voice dictation on Google Glass and Android Wear.

1. A wearable technology love story
[ WaterLogg ]

2. Hi! I’m @jasonsalas.
- Product manager, news
anchor, college football
analyst, filmmaker
- Co-author of Designing &
Developing for Google
Glass
- That Guy who likes
Godfather: Part III best

3. “Necessity is the mother
of invention.”
Great moments in thinking

4. “Necessity is the mother
of invention.”
Plato, The Republic,
circa 380 BC
Great moments in thinking

5. “When you create a solution for
a problem that doesn’t exist,
THAT’S invention.”
Great moments in thinking

6. “When you create a solution for
a problem that doesn’t exist,
THAT’S invention.”
Me, some obscure graduate
school paper, circa 1999 AD
Great moments in thinking

7. Put it into perspective...

8. Fitbit, IoT & The Quantified Self

9. Inefficiency epiphany
● I drink A LOT of water
○ Large daily volume
○ Multiple “transactions”
● Fussing with Fitbit’s mobile & web apps is often
laborious
○ Constantly posting via phone, tablet & browser
○ Keeps me from doing other things

10. Do what engineers do
1. Identify a problem
2. Simplify the problem
3. Solve the problem

11. ● A Glass/Fitbit mashup
○ Head-mounted client largely without a UI
● RESTful application
○ Cloud service doesn’t require native app startup/shutdown
● Voice is the perfect input mechanism
○ 4 seconds versus 20 seconds
○ Android’s Speech Recognizer is excellent with numbers
EUREKA! WaterLogg is born

12. ● Tell Glass how much water you drink
○ ...literally!
● Track how much you’ve consumed
○ ...constantly!
● Continue to live in the moment
○ ...conveniently!
● Leverage the Internet of Things
○ ...totally!
Handsfree program control

13. Use case
● Drink water at the office, in the car, at a restaurant, while
exercising, doing dishes, folding laundry, lying on the couch...
● “OK Glass - post an update to - WaterLogg - thirty-three”
● Audio transcribed as numeric text & pushed to the cloud
● Fitbit profile updated & synced across platforms/devices
● Confirmation card inserted into Glass timeline

14. ● This is precisely the behavior where wearables rock
○ Doesn’t take users away out of the real world
○ Caters to microinteractions: quick, lightweight sessions
● A completely subjective solution
○ Nothing existing addressed my specific need
○ High impact, low intrusion, stupidly simple
○ Rapid production time
Opportunities

15. Let’s take it for a spin

16. Voice command

17. Voice command

18. (or a tappable home card menu item)

19. (or a tappable home card menu item)

20. Glass listens for input

21. Speak volume of water consumed

22. Volume transcribed & uploaded

23. Success!

24. Success!

25. I use this all the time, everywhere.

26. Seriously. (Ask my co-workers & neighbors.)

27. ● Mirror API
○ Static cards, menu items, voice command, sharing contact
● Google APIs Client Library for Python
○ OAuth 2.0 flow
● App Engine
○ Task Queue
● Temboo
○ Insanely useful libs supporting 100+ APIs, devices & databases
○ Proxies authorized requests to remote services
Server-side semantics

28. Mirror API flow

29. Mirror API flow

30. Mirror API flow

31. Mirror API flow

32. - Callback needs to respond to notification pings ASAP
- Let a managed service handle processing (like multithreading)
- Adopt this pattern in all Glassware, no matter how trivial
Use a job queue for async processing

33. Roadmap
● Smartwatch integration
○ Same idea, but designed for the wrist
■ Swipeable list with commonly-used volumes, too!
○ Using voice is sometimes awkward
■ At a gig, in church, in line at the bank, at the movies, in court
● Contextual awareness
○ What I’m doing, where I am, what time it is, who I’m with,
who’s near me, what’s going on around me

34. WaterLogg for Android Wear

35. ● No data connection on the watch
○ Communicates with paired phone
● Architecture is much different
○ Input captured on wearable, then pushed to handheld over
Bluetooth, then to the cloud
● Android Wear SDK
○ 100% Java
○ Node API, Message API, Data Layer API
Platform gotchas

37. A service on the handheld is the secret sauce

38. Takeaways
● Big win isn’t next-gen technical alchemy
○ Not just Glassware for the sake of Glassware
● Enhancing value by delivering real utility
○ Creating an effective solution to do something better
● Fluency of the wearable UX
○ Right tool for the right job
○ Leveraging microinteractions

39. As it turns out, the Grecian formula was right
Philosopher king > Guam dweeb

40. Get the code
Explore, clone, fork & improve!
https://github.com/jasonsalas/WaterLoggforGlass
https://github.com/jasonsalas/WaterLoggforWear

41. SPOILER ALERT!!!

42. Shameless self-promotion FTW
@jasonsalas
google.com/+JasonSalas
#ThinkForGlass

43. Thanks for
your time!
(And remember to hydrate.)
;-)