Science

Georgia Tech Grad Student Testing “Eyewear of the Future”

August 12th, 2013

Google has a few thousand technology enthusiasts across the country testing its new Google Glass device. One of them is Georgia Tech graduate student Zane Cochran, who talked with WABE about his relationship with his new eyewear and how it is affecting his world.An audio version of this story

Cochran says he has been wearing his Google glasses for a month, and he wears them pretty much all the time. “It doesn’t sit right in front of your eye, so it’s not constantly demanding your attention,” says Cochran. “But if things happen throughout the day, it will alert you to you know a new email or an appointment that you have coming up or if traffic is going to be particularly busy on your way to work.”

Google Glass is a small computer attached to eyeglass frames, and Cochran is a natural to test this technology. Google signed him up after he sent them information about an application he had developed to log his running statistics on his own set of eyeglass frames. And at Tech, he is studying human interaction with technology.

“It’s been interesting to see the social kind of repercussions of working with this technology,” says Cochran. “When I go places, people will ask, ‘Is it OK? Can I try them on?’ And I’m totally fine with that, so I let them try it on. And the initial reaction is always, ‘This is so cool.’”

But is the technology worth the hassle?

Cochran says, “I find that they’re actually quite comfortable. They’re much lighter than I anticipated. The little display that shows you the information, it just sits right above your eye. So that, when you’re talking to people, you can have a normal conversation, you can make eye contact. But when it needs to alert you to something, you just look slightly up, and it’s there on a screen that is placed right above your eye. And you can look at it real quickly, and get the information that you need, and go on with your day.”

Cochran says he and other Google Glass testers give feedback via emails to Google and an online community for the testers. And since the glasses are his to keep, he plans to keep wearing them … pretty much all the time.