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.

1. [ WaterLogg ]
A Google Glass/Fitbit mashup

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 III the best

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

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

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

6. Great moments in thinking
“When you create a solution for
a problem that doesn’t exist,
THAT’S invention.”
- Me, in graduate school

7. Fitbit, IoT & The Quantified Self

8. Inefficiency revealed
● 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

9. WaterLogg is born!
● Glassware updating Fitbit data
○ Head-mounted client largely without a UI
● RESTful application
○ Cloud service doesn’t require native app startup/shutdown
● Vocal actions are the perfect input mechanism
○ 4 seconds versus 20 seconds

10. Handsfree, voice-driven program control
● 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!

11. 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

12. Opportunities
● This is precisely the behavior where Glass is great
○ 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

13. Let’s take it for a spin

14. Voice command

15. Voice command

16. (or a tappable home card menu item)

17. (or a tappable home card menu item)

18. Glass listens for input

19. Speak volume of water consumed

20. Volume transcribed & uploaded

21. Success!

22. Success!

23. I use this all the time, everywhere.

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

25. Server-side semantics
● 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

26. Mirror API flow

27. Mirror API flow

28. Mirror API flow

29. Mirror API flow

30. Use a job queue for async processing
- 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

31. 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

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

33. Roadmap
● Android Wear integration
○ Same idea, but designed for smartwatches
● Contextual computing
○ 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. Get the code
Explore, clone, fork & improve!
https://github.com/jasonsalas/Waterlogg

35. SPOILER ALERT:
. . .shameless self-promotion ahead. . .

36. (Cough, cough)
@jasonsalas
google.com/+JasonSalas
#ThinkForGlass

37. Thanks for
your time!
;-)