Recently I started cataloging all the changes I would make to Glass and wrote up a (not perfectly organized) power point presentation. More recently Google announced and released Android wear, which is very much in line with some of my suggestions, so I felt validated that my ideas were relevant and thought I should share them. Hopefully some of my other ideas are in line w/ what Google is thinking, because a technology like a Glass is a certainty to be in your household, but not in its current form.

1. EvGlass
Google Glass 2.0

2. Reception & Reality
• Absolutely brilliant version 1, no one else had the
balls/skills/competence to put software, hardware, UI,
OS, social integration, & grand concept together
• Lots of hype, media coverage -> people were blown
away initially by Glass’ potential
• Glass’ camera is freaking people out privacy-wise
• Glass’ UI is challenging, finger taps on the forehead are
awkward & voice recognition has serious shortcomings
• Glass’ App eco-system is still very immature, people
are still trying to figure out how to utilize Glass

3. Current Outlook is not so good
• Robert Scoble (amongst others) said Glass
won’t be successful for several years
• Major Hurdles: Privacy backlash, un-cool
appearance, Glassholes, headaches (health
warning), short battery life, poor video
conferencing, high price, & immature app
ecosystem
• Number of apps in Glassware is <50 as of
March 2014, developer adoption is slow

4. BUT Glass’ concept is unstoppable
• IMO the Google Glass concept (head mounted
computer) is an unstoppable technology
worth billions
• The questions remain:
1. When will Smart-Glasses tech go mainstream?
2. What needs to be done to get there?
3. Who will own the software stack
4. Is making Glass’ hardware a good idea for
Google?

5. Also, What is Google’s angle w/ Glass?
• Is Google looking to become the software (ala Android)
or the hardware (ala Chromecast) provider for the
wearable Smart-Glasses market?
• Most likely software including cloud integration (spans
location services to social) is the smarter play for
Google. This will let 3rd party hardware companies
drive down hardware costs and offer the full range of
discount to luxury devices (like the smart-phone
market)
• Question ANSWERED: 3/10/2014 -> SOFTWARE
Android Wear SDK -> BRILLIANT

6. What needs doing to get Glass going
1. Low hanging fruits
2. Fashion & Battery re-think
3. Identify & enable Glass’ killer app

7. Possible Quick First changes
1. Have a version of Glass w/ a camera shutter,
that way people will KNOW when they are
being filmed
2. Allow Trusted-apps to send notifications to
Glass that wake Glass up and display the
message
3. Create software framework so programmers
can easily get Glass to communicate w/
trusted Android devices

8. 1.) Glass w/ camera shutter
• Combatting the “Is that thing filming me right
now” paranoia will help curb the Glasshole-
backlash
• When the camera shutter is closed, people
will know there is no optical way they are
being filmed
• A closed shutter can differ in color to signal
the Camera-Off status to anyone within eye-
shot

9. Camera may be filming

10. Camera is OFF

11. Make the shutter Red
SHOUT: CAMERA IS OFF

12. 2.) Trusted App Notifications
• Trusted App refers to Glass Apps with permissions to
wake up Glass and display notifications automatically
• Since battery life is a big concern for Glass, the wake on
notification flow is the smart way for apps to efficiently
use Glass’ display for event driven display usage:
– An app that always has the screen on would kill the battery
– An immersive app denies ALL other apps screen access
• Currently Glass’ display is passive, which for many apps
means dead in the water, this single feature changes
Glass’ passiveness in a manner that also promotes low
battery usage

13. Examples/Guidelines/etc…
• Example: There are emails from certain people that are
important enough that I want the notification to wake up
Glass and be displayed (this email app would be trusted
and it would have filters to wake up only for said people)
• Apps with trusted app privileges will follow guidelines to
display non-distracting notifications (e.g. white text, black
background, certain font,,,)
• Provide wearer ability to untrust apps that spam w/
notifications
• A more mature notification system, using a smart-watch’s
screen as a secondary notification screen would kick ass
(e.g. only high priority notifications go to Glass, smart-
watch can edit notification priorities in real-time, etc…)

14. 3.) Device communication framework
• NOTE: This was written before Android Wear was
announced
• Glass benefits from being Bluetooth paired to an
Android device (e.g. a smart-phone) or using an
Android device’s wifi tether to connect to the internet
• This bond, between Glass & Android device should be
formalized, best practices should be defined for each
side
• Many tasks are best performed on devices external to
Glass (e.g. UI via smart-phone or smart-watch, cellular
communication via a smart-phone, video upload from
Glass handed off to trusted external device)

15. Framework details
• Making Glass<->Device communication simple to
implement for developers (via a formalized framework)
would increase adoption of all wearables
• Users would grant trust to devices with which Glass
had a Bluetooth or Wifi connection
• Wake-up-privilege-levels between Glass and trusted
devices would be configurable on a per app basis (like
Android privileges)
• This will greatly extend the Glass ecosystem (e.g.
enable user’s smart-watch to do UI for Glass) in a
secure manner & help Android’s overall penetration, as
it promotes Android across and between all devices

16. External UI devices
• Low hanging Fruit: A device that can exactly mimic
Glass’ UI inputs (e.g. swipe back and forth, tap, etc…)
can be paired to Glass and used to feed direct UI inputs
to steer Glass. Exact UI-gesture-match means zero
learning curve for users familiar w/ Glass.
• Smart-watches make perfect external UI devices, they
are always accessible (much like Glass), and they
provide a more natural steering wheel than raising
your right hand to your forehead and tapping/swiping
• Also, many Glass apps (e.g. games) would benefit from
using a smart-phone’s large tactile screen to steer Glass
apps while Glass is used solely for its display

17. External devices for Second Screen
• Second screen apps complementing Glass make
sense due to Glass’ relatively small screen size
• IDEA: Second screen apps enable apps to
segment the display of semi-public (the device
can be shoulder surfed) & ultra-private (Glass is
user eyes/ears only) information
• Semi-public information can include navigation
items for ultra-private details (e.g. Device selects
a user, Glass displays your private chat history)

18. 4*.) Glass App ecosystem is tiny
• IMO Glass’ limited UI (forehead tap/swipe &
voice-recognition) limit the App ecosystem
greatly
• Additionally, stand-alone Glass is not as
compelling as Glass + smart-phone + smart-
watch … enable this setup and the apps will
come (this solves the UI problem as well)
• Android Wear seems to agree 

19. NEXT STEPS
• Battery & Fashion re-think

20. Battery & Fashion
• Battery life is a key ingredient to the success
of any wearable
• Glass’ battery placement must take fashion
into account as Glass sits on your face
• Glass’ fashion design is made more difficult by
the requirement of fusing heavy large
batteries into the glasses design

21. IDEA: Back-straps
add a lot of real estate

22. Add Prism & Camera

23. Add CPU, Wifi, etc…

24. Add Four Batteries

25. Only Prism & Camera negatively impact
how good these look on your face

26. Benefits of this design
• Multiple batteries can be used, opens up possibility to
clip/unclip extra batteries
• Clip/Unclip extra batteries enables users to carry some
extra pre-charged batteries in their pocket & charge
some batteries while using others … enabling them …
-> to use Glass 24/7 without taking it off
• Big Bulky CPU section does not block face, can be
made larger to house a CPU capable of video
conferencing
• Pushing hardware to the backstrap looks cooler than
having it on the frame, by virtue of the big bulky parts
being hidden from direct frontal facial viewing

27. Ummm, what about the UI?
• This design pushes the UI unit to the back of
the head, which simply does not work
• IMHO the UI unit on the temple of the head
should be moved to a smart-watches screen
• This decision necessitates Glass be a tandem
product (Glass + smart-watch) which is a
complication, but it is a better product this
way

28. Fashion
• Minimizing difference between normal
glasses/sunglasses and Google Glass by
moving units to the back strap allows standard
glasses fashion rules to be applicable
• There are many variants of glasses people like,
and Google Glass is very far (fashion-wise)
from any of them, so bridging that gap is the
way to go (this means offering lots of different
styles)

29. Long Term Goals for Glass
• Question:
For which market is Glass ultimately intended?
• Answer:
Consumer … there will be 7 billion of them soon

30. A feasible consumer purpose for Glass
• The consumer purpose for Glass should be to
take the user’s current context as input and
provide the wearer with relevant information
automatically
• This contextual info can be displayed as audio,
video, & text
• Determining the user’s context will be done via
any and all sensors on the person’s context (e.g.
Glass’ audio & video feeds, smart-phone sensors,
fitbit, nearby iBeacons)

31. Depth of Context opens up new worlds
• Context can cover: who is nearby, what I am
currently doing (e.g. watching NFL on TV/tablet),
physical state (e.g. heart rate,
walking/running/sitting), geo-location, indoor-
location, social graph activity (e.g. nearby
facebook friend just tweeted something)
• Turning context into information, summarizing &
aggregating this info to be displayed intelligently,
in a customizable form, to the user is the end-
game of wearables

32. Glass & Context Examples
• Greg Linden’s post: get small informational hints like being reminded of names
and who people are when they are in meetings. What if you could put on a pair of normal-looking glasses
(or contacts) and insert a small device into an ear, and then suddenly you are subtly superhuman?
• Google Now 
• Refresh.io + Android devices w/ Bluetooth
low-energy (BLE) peripheral mode: When two users BLE
signals collide, they are close to each other (w/in 30 ft). Refresh.io lookups can be performed and displayed
in Glass when BLE signals collide. User gets up to the second information on people w/In 30 ft of their
person. Smart-watch would have UI to navigate to desired profile when multiple are nearby.
• Private screen texting. Users can send each other messages (text, image,
audio, video) and the message will be visible/audible only to the receiver on his glasses/earpiece. Good
potential for snap-chat like ephemeral messaging. Lots of Gaming potential

33. Add super human abilities
• Google glass performs constant speech recognition, of
you and also whomever you are talking to
• Text appears on Glass’ screen, w/ different colors
differentiating yours from other people’s voice streams
• Smart-watch has different options to google last
sentence, last 5 words, next sentence, next 5 words,
from live stream
• Natural conversations can be seamlessly googled
behind the scenes w/ minimal smart-watch button
pressing
• User is now super-human in that he already knows the
answer to spoken questions

34. Examples: Contextual information
• Use a device’s (e.g. smart-phone) BLE signal to represent a user, when
another user comes into range, display their info (refresh.io use-case)
• Resolve iBeacon UUID’s to contextual info & auto-display
• In the morning when you put Glass on, get your wake-up info (e.g.
weather, news, Asian stocks)
• Glass detects when you are driving, then asks if you need directions (ask
!= passive)
• Determine TV show being watched, if (live-sports) then display relevant
game stats in Glass, if (sitcom) then display tweet stream about show in
Glass
• Watching youtube on tablet, Glass navigates youtube’s menus w/o
disrupting tablet’s screen (switching devices’ roles works too) – second
screen use-case (think Chromecast)

35. Summary
1. Camera Shutter, Trusted Apps, Android Wear
SDK to create multi device ecosystems
2. Multiple batteries for clip/unclip action plus CPU
on backstrap of glasses AND moving UI to a
smart-watch is a superior form factor
3. Aggregated user context automatically displayed
on Glass is the best application direction
4. Google should concentrate on Software, leaving
the hardware to 3rd parties

36. BACKUP

37. Webpage browsing on Glass
• Remember how bad webpage browsing used to
be on smart-phones (in say 2007), they are worse
on Glass
• AFAIK Glass can not scroll left & right on a web-
page bigger than Glass’ screen (which means ALL
web-pages)
• Voice driven link selection (e.g. <a voice-
link=“play movie”>) or navigation might help, but
not enough
• A smart-watch w/ a tactile screen and a few
smart buttons may be the easiest solution

38. Natural UI is KING
• Glass is described as hands-free, which has a limited scope
of use-cases
• Speech recognition is cool, but not always practical (e.g. in
a crowd) and is limited
• Head jerks and winks and other repurposed natural physical
human movements are actually a bad idea, they constrain
Glass usage to be use-cases that don’t overlap w/ the
repurposed physical movement (you can no longer
naturally jerk your head or wink as these movements now
trigger Glass actions)
• Natural UI, which is best done w/ our hands is the right way
to go (IMO the smart-watch is the best Glass UI device)

39. A visually tagged world (maybe)
• Objects in the real world can be bar-code tagged
• Barcode can be a regular black & white barcode sticker,
maybe a infared or UV barcode sticker and a matching
filter on Glass’ camera, maybe some clever
steganography (but this probably wont work). I haven’t
quite figure this one out yet 
• A Glass user could look at something long enough, to
trigger a take-picture-&-analyze-picture event, if the
analysis found a barcode, the barcode would be
resolved to information and this would be added to the
user’s context