The Working Glass: Google Glass on the Job

Whether or not smart glasses like Google Glass™ ever gain mainstream acceptance, there’s no question that Glass can be useful to help drive businesses forward. With it’s ability to overlay relevant, real-time data over the world around the user, Google Glass becomes highly relevant to many enterprises where desk less workers can benefit from hands-free access to data.

Possible jobs scenarios that Google Glass could impact.

Google Glass business applications seem pretty far reaching, and one can imagine all kinds of business applications for Glass. Some common Glass scenarios that CEG is exploring currently for enterprise are:

Real-time data
Share live video
Live monitoring applications and equipment
Quality Control – Capture pictures and video
Manage tasks and workflows process
Hands-free
Language translation
Mobile access to content
Overlay visuals
Locate and track assets and users

Some possible business verticals that these Glass scenarios could dramatically impact include:

Logistics & Transportation

Just think, truckers, a pizza delivery person or taxi drivers could use Glass for hands-free, real-time navigation. Glass can help accelerate proper and timely deliveries by allowing drivers and suppliers receive alerts about pick-ups and drop-offs. Glass could give drivers the ability to synch and share real time data about their vehicles to the wearer’s display or home office, such as tracking milage, driving habits or engine diagnostics.

Google Glass can benefit warehousing and asset tracking by helping increase the visibility of inventory and supply as well as other warehouse tasks. Glass would allow workers to quickly locate inventory, map out facilities, and manage and expedite workflows.

Imagine pilots using Glass to receive turn-by-turn directions to their destination or nearest airport. With Glass as a heads-up display, coordinates and descriptions of nearby landmarks would be visible at all times, without having to look down at the control panel. Pilots could also get weather information on their Glass screen instead of having to call for updates. Glass could combine screen displays with voice commands to share detailed instructions from air traffic controllers.

Health & Medical

In today’s hospital, doctors, surgeons, and nurses are constantly on the move, which can lead to greater disconnect and careless workflows. Glass enables doctors, surgeons, and nurses to achieve greater efficiency, collaboration, and patient satisfaction.

Google Glass can provide clinicians with a hands-free digital workflow system for patient exams, tests, or procedures. Just imagine a healthcare professional walking up to a patient’s bed and instantly see all their vitals such as pulse, blood pressure, oxygen and vital parameters. Or a nurse scans the medication they are about to give the patient and confirms the correct drug and right patient by overlaying their patient profile with the person in front of them–possibly stopping a medical error.

Glass can be navigated with voice commands and touch actions to capture dictated messages or point-of-view perspective photos and recorded videos. Data could be retrieved, edited, and uploaded from/to the relevant clinical systems.

Glass can help educate new medical students, such as a surgeon streams to residents and students a live surgery–so that they can see what work goes into a medical procedure first hand. Or a student brings up their notes and lab reports as they present their patient case to their attending, with data available in real time. Glass can lead to a potential major change in medical practice.

Education & Training

Google Glass has the potential to bring exciting new possibilities to professors, teachers and students alike. Paired in real time with a Google+ hang-out, Glass allows an educator the ability to broadcast their classroom in first person to almost anywhere in the world. Imagine remote teaching, one on one tutor sessions, remote guest speakers, or first person video guides for the collective class experience. Google Glass can offer employees instant, hands-free retrieval of detailed tutorials and training whenever a reminder was needed.

Glass could record surgeries in the operating room from a true surgeon’s-eye view of the patient that can be used to teach aspiring surgeons. Instructors could take students on virtual field trips, or record other live events to use as instructional tools. Glass could also be used to provide instructions to students working in a lab or other hands-on settings.

Glass can put you in the shoes of the wearer to experience the world through a student’s eyes. Allowing a teacher to capture and peek into a students’ learning process or how they see the classroom in general.

Glass has the ability to translates what the viewer is reading to and from many languages.

Securities

In a fast pace data-intensive securities environment, Glass could become the next essential tool for fire fighters, police officers, and first responders.

Glass is capable of streaming live video from the patrol car to a communications center. Glass could store proximity markers and “geo-sets” of areas of special interest, so for instance a police officer enters a known drug activity zone, they would be instantly alerted and provided with background information on their heads-up display. Or what if a police officer is on site of a shooting and has the hands-free ability to relay an image of a building where the suspect is along with GPS coordinates of the structure, as well as general information about the environment, such as location of the officer and bystanders.

Police academies could use Google Glass to demonstrate dangerous procedures, such as disarming a bomb. Streaming Glass video could help bomb disposal technicians get expert help in real time when facing unfamiliar threats.

What about a Glass App that lets firefighters receive field data directly to a display inside an face-mask. Firefighters would have heads up display to data like building blueprints, maps, fire hydrant locations, and the ability to stream live video back to HQ.

Media & Entertainment

Imagine an army of reporters all using Glass, it would make true real-time, breaking news very possible – in fact, it will redefine the very notion of what news is: no longer organized but reactive.

Glass can open up the doors to more creative types of videography. Glass gives wearers the ability to record video from an entirely new, first-person perspective. Without the need to hold a device one can capture video from anywhere.

Google Glass can also act as a second screen to sporting events, TV, concerts and more, giving viewers access to an extra layer of real-time information. For instance, as people watch live sports events at the stadium or home, they can access statistics, scores or event highlights, for an enriched and personalized experience. The NBA’s Sacramento Kings and the NHL’s Washington Capitals have already integrated Glass into their fan experience at their arenas.

Advertisement

Currently Google has no plans for advertising on Glass, but Glass could entirely change the way we interact with brands and businesses. Google Glass is the future of advertising. Ads on Glass could be highly personal.

Deals could pop up whenever you walk by a business offering a discount, or maybe even when you’re drinking a cup of coffee. Imagine walking by a store and an ad pops up for a purse from your favorite designer. Or an offer is triggered by a search for directions, your looking for a great Italian restaurant nearby and an ad pops up suggesting 10% off your next meal at this location. The result would be something of an ideal scenario for advertisers — getting in front of a consumer just as they’re ready to buy your product or a rival product.

Energy, Utilities & Industrial

Glass could impact industrial sectors such as oil and gas, construction and utilities,  where mobile workers engage complex technical repairs. Diagnosing and fixing problems more quickly and without needing to send additional experts to remote sites, can have a huge cost savings for a company. Watching video streamed from an engineers’ Glass can deliver ‘over-the-shoulder’ advice from another location.

Glass lets users access and view documents and schematics via hands-free voice commands. Imagine a field engineer using Glass voice commands to access to details about a job location and its equipment on site.

At a build site video and images captured from an inspector’s Glass could be stored as evidence that a job was done correctly or that everything looked fine during a walkthroughs.

Glass is sure to impact other industries like travel, insurance, retail, and banking. The possibilities seem endless and there is sure to be millions of innovative ways industries use the technology that we haven’t even dreamed of yet.

So even if Glass fails to become a consumer hit that Google hopes it will be, Glass will live on in hospitals, class rooms, police cars, work sites, and sports stadiums. What role will Google Glass play inside your company? Contact Creative Elements Group at info@powderceg.com to set up a discovery session and unlock the possibilities Glass will have on your company.