An Evaluation of Google Glass : Design, Implementation and Evaluation of a Product Assembly Application for Google Glass and Smartphones

Abstract: Assembling components in a production line could potentially be a tedious task, if performed stepwise by the book. However, an employee who is assembling many different products may not know all the steps by heart. As such they will be reliant on an instruction manual. However, an instruction manual must be carried around and, while assembling components, placed in the assembler's line of sight. Instead new technology could make the process more efficient. Google Glass places a display slightly above the user's line of sight and can be controlled via voice commands, and as such solves many of the problems associated with carrying around instruction manuals. This dissertation is an evaluation of Google Glass and describes the design, implementation and evaluation of an product assembly application for both Google Glass and smartphones. The smartphone version was implemented in order to provide a reference point as well as means of comparison with the Google Glass application. The test application used in the study was to read a QR code and download a set of assembly instructions. Testing was carried out on the different steps of the application, from when the QR code had been scanned until the information was displayed to the user. The results show that Google Glass is almost always slower, in all steps, compared to the smartphone equivalents. The conclusion is that Google must upgrade and improve on Google Glass and in particular the hardware. Google Glass overheats easily and the camera is of inferior quality. Google's implementation restrictions also limits what developers might be able to do with the device. However, Google Glass is easy to use and has potential to become a more useful device in the future.