The glass class: Designing wearable interfaces

The course will teach how to create compelling user experiences for wearable computers focusing on design guidelines, prototyping tools, research directions, and a hands-on design experience. These topics will be presented using a number of platforms such as Google Glass, the Recon Jet and Vuzix M-100, although the material will be relevant to other wearable devices. The class will begin with an overview of almost 50 years of wearable computing, beginning with the casino computers of Ed Thorp, through the pioneering efforts of researchers at CMU and MIT, to the most recent commercial systems. The key technology components of a wearable system will be covered, as well as some of the theoretical underpinnings. Next, a set of design guidelines for developing wearable user interfaces will be presented. These include lessons learned from using wearables on a daily basis, design patterns from existing wearable interfaces, and relevant results from the research community. These will be presented in enough details that attendees will be able to use them in their own wearable designs. The third section of the course will introduce a number of tools that can be used for rapid prototyping of wearable interfaces. These include screen-building tools such as Glasssim, through to templating tools that support limited interactivity, and simple programming tools such as Processing. This will lead into a section that discusses the technology of wearable systems in more detail. For example, the different types of head mounted displays for wearables, tracking technology for wearable AR interfaces, input devices, etc. Finally, we will discuss active areas of research that will affect wearable interfaces over the next few years. This includes technologies such as new display hardware, input devices, body worn sensors, and connectivity. The course will have the following educational goals: • Provide an introduction to head mounted wearable computers • Give an understanding of current wearable computing technology • Describe key design principles/interface metaphors • Provide an overview of the relevant human perceptual principles • Explain how to use Processing for rapid prototyping • Show how to capturing and use sensor input • Outline active areas of research in wearable computing • Hands on demonstrations with Google Glass and other wearable computers.