Seeing New York City Through Google Glass

As we get closer to the launch of the consumer version of Google Glass, aimed for early 2014, we’ve seen Glass show off a range of functions, from capturing first-person video footage to identifying music playing in a restaurant. For Google, however, this is just the beginning of what Glass can do, which is why they’re reaching out to creative minds and inventors to develop ideas for applications that will make Glass into the ultimate mobile technology.
On November 10, at the NYU Tisch School, about 50 students and developers gathered for a Google Glass Design Sprint, organized by NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). Moderated by Glass developer advocate Timothy Jordan, this “design sprint” was a high-powered brainstorming session focused on dreaming up apps that would improve the way Glass-wearers navigate city environments. The goal of the design sprint was to explore ideas for what Glass can contribute to urban science on the streets of New York.  Participants produced a flurry of brightly colored post-its, scrawled with notes like “language translation” and “count density of subway traffic,” then spent two hours discussing their ideas, evaluating each one’s usefulness and complexity.
One attendee was Jared Lamenzo, an ITP alumnus who works for digital design company Mediated Spaces and develops “citizen science” apps to encourage kids to interact with nature. Jared collaborating with Cornell University on an app that would allow users to identify birds in the wild. With Glass, Jared’s app would bring bird watching to a whole new level, with almost instantaneous recognition. He’s also a Google Explorer, which means he owns the $1,500 developer edition of Google Glass that was released in February. He and his friend Gabriel Willow used Glass to make this guided tour of Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, with additional special effects from the Mozilla PopcornMaker program:

https://jaredlamenzo.makes.org/popcorn/1e74


Most attendees were current NYU graduate students, like Shilpan Baghat, who is developing an Android app to help consumers make informed choices at grocery stores. At the moment, he says, there’s no app that uses personalized nutritional data to guide consumers and tell them whether a product would be good or bad for them, based on various health indicators like Body Mass Index (BMI) and cholesterol levels. Though it will take a while to develop, he hopes this application could eventually be extended to Google Glass.
This is just the start of ITP’s work on Google Glass. Over the next few months, students will continue to flesh out their ideas for applications, said Shawn Van Every, a professor at ITP. By the end of the spring, ITP expects to host another event to test out the students’ prototypes on Google Glass. Google continues to reach into the community to gather ideas, inspire developers to begin work, and of course, raise the level of excitement about this potentially-transformative new technology.