Source: google.com
Google’s new OK Glass concept is not dissimilar from Apple’s Siri. But the search giant’s take on voice command and mobile computing may offer users something more viable than Siri.
It appears that the long-anticipated appearance of “Google Glass” has at least begun to make its way onto the tech scene. Today, Google unveiled “OK Glass,” which the company put on display as its answer to Apple’s Siri. The difference? OK Glass is voice command with a new piece of hardware: camera, monitor, and microphone-equipped eyewear.
CNET explains:
“The Glass eyewear perches a screen just above a person’s ordinary field of view; the device itself is equipped with a processor, camera, head-tracking orientation sensors, and other electronics drawn from the smartphone industry . . . Google’s video and “what-it-does” explanation is very much from a first-person perspective, showing what it’s like to wear the device. It makes for a very personal experience, reproducing what a person would see and adding an unobtrusive transparent Glass interface in the upper right.”
When you take a look at the video, you’ll be hard-pressed to not see how OK Glass is an answer to Siri; the crux of the new technology is voice command. There are, however, some very palpable differences between Siri and OK Glass, and my initial reaction is that Google might be on the right track here.
The obvious difference is the addition of a major hardware piece: the glasses. With earbuds in, Siri can communicate with the user back and forth, but the user interface is audio-based, lest you look down at the screen and see the results of your Siri query. By putting the display front and center into the field of vision, nearly every scenario where Apple tried to sell Siri is improved on with OK Glass. It’s always going to be better to have the option of a small, transparent display to augment the UI. And given some of the tech that is bound to get rolled our with OK Glass, it also looks like the glasses will be responsive to head gestures, and may even come to read retinal activity down the line.
But the real difference between Siri and OK Glass is the persona of the tech. And by “persona,” I mean the way in which the UI is characterized to the user. With Siri, Apple has sought to make it into a “her” — a virtual assistant who bears some resemblance to an artificial intelligence. Siri, after all, has a voice.
It’s interesting that in the demo video, Google has sought to pre-market OK Glass as an entity as well. The prompt, after all, is not really, “OK Glass,” but “OK, Glass.” And with that little comma — that little inflection, it becomes a referent to the glasses.
But that’s not really what OK Glass seems to be about.
The big selling point is how the built-in camera and microphone mimics the human eye and ear — it becomes a extension of the user’s own senses. In this way, OK Glass isn’t an entity unto itself — it is a true augmentation of the wearer; an extension of the user’s own senses.
I’ve argued before that this is the most significant aspect of smartphones; they are augmenting our ability to access information, communicate, and solve problems, much like a cyborg. One could argue that Siri is also an extension of cyborg technology. But OK Glass takes it to another level.
I don’t see how Apple will be able to compete with OK Glass unless very soon they too unveil something like this, alla “Siri Shades.” Whatever the case, my feeling is that users will be more comfortable with OK Glass, which becomes an extension of their own self, rather than Siri, which masquerades as an artificial intelligence worth talking to on a daily basis.
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By Michael Nace
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2 Responses to “Google’s OK Glass: What Siri Should Be, And Isn’t”
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February 20th, 2013 at 5:48 pm
It’s bad enough to have a crowd full of people staring blankly into their smartphones, now they will be talking to themselves.
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February 20th, 2013 at 10:54 pm
Very interesting article Michael, great job! Had no idea Google was anywhere near ready to present this product. It’ll be interesting to see how fast Apple scrambles their concepts together & moves forward with them after seeing Google’s OK Glass.
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