What will they think of next?!

written by Kristin Cavallaro

Just when we think we figured out the world of smartphones, Google throws a curveball.  Like something you would normally see in a sci-fi movie, Google has released their prototype of their new Google Glass.  It is essentially like wearing your smartphone as a pair of eyeglasses.  The controls are voice activated and allow you to visit websites, click photos and take video just by saying specific commands.  Talk about hands free. The images are shown on a small screen positioned in front of your eyeball.

Is this the wave of the future?  According to reports from the Wall Street Journal, this isn’t too far way.  Google Glass will be available in early to mid 2013 to developers and available to the public shortly after that.  As exciting as this is, how will this affect our surveys?  Now instead of making sure our radio buttons are displayed properly on the screen of a smartphone, we need to make sure that the programming accurately records and interprets the voice prompts of the respondent.  How will background noise affect the quality of these voice commands?

But why focus on the negative, let’s instead focus on the positive. What doors will Google Glass open up in terms of market research?  One thing that comes to mind is a video diary.  While this isn’t a new avenue of research, it will certainly be made easier when all you have to do is command the Google Glass to begin recording and the device will do so.  The participant can then move about freely and not worry about holding a video camera.  The researcher will see exactly what the respondent sees.