If you really want to test a new gadget, take it on vacation. That’s what I did with Google Glass, and the result was revelatory. It saved me from inadvertently booking reservations at a restaurant an hour away (Hey, it looked close on the map). It let me get in and get out of my email and keep up with the world in bite-sized nuggets without having to put down my Mai Tai and dive in. Also, it was great for kids. Seriously.
I probably looked a little weird, wearing Glass standing over a BBQ grill in Maui. And quite honestly, the other adults I encountered gave me weird looks and weirder question: What do they do? How do they work? Why would you wear those? Do you know what you look like in those? When I give it to other people to wear, they’re often even more flummoxed. They often get lost in the interface and hand it back in frustration. But my kid loved it, and so did everyone else’s kid I encountered. And in much the same way that kids seem to have an intuitive ability to use an iPhone, it been my experience that they naturally get Glass. Or at least, get into it.
Let me say up front: I’m wary of giving my two-year-old access to technology. We try to keep her away from screens as much as possible, which is tough because she’s fascinated by these things her parents are always fiddling with. Mostly she likes to look at pictures. Despite her limited time spent with them, she can dive right into my iPhone and Nexus 4 and start scrolling through the pictures. But she can’t take the photos herself. Well, not of anything she wants to.
But she can with Glass.
After watching me wear Glass for a few days on vacation, she started asking to wear them as well. I, tentatively, let her, firing up the video camera as I did so.
What surprised me was she more or less understood how to use it. As soon as I dropped them on her face she said, “OK, Glass take a picture of daddy, cheeeeeeese.” No, she wasn’t doing it properly, but she understood the syntax. As soon as I showed her how to press the button to take a picture, she started firing them off herself.
Of course, as is almost always true on the Interent, I’m far from the first person to outfit their kid with a set of Glass. [#video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/O9aNzzWv_iM]
In my personal (very limited) experience, what’s true of my own kid is often true of others. They don’t have the social hang-ups of wearing this awkward-looking thing on their faces. They don’t get hung up in the interface. They haven’t built up expectations of how an interface should work.
And sure, what I’m talking about here is basically just taking pictures and videos and playing them back. My two year-old isn’t into The New York Times app or Twitter. She isn’t navigating, or paying attention to Google Now. But it’s been interesting to me to see how very much more receptive kids seem to be to Glass than adults. Their eagerness to try it out neatly mirrors the adult reluctance I’ve encountered. It makes me think part of Glass’ perception problem is simply due to it being so different than anything most of us have experienced before. Because when viewed with a beginner’s mind, much of that fades away.
