When we said “Listen To Javelin,” Google Glass searched Google Play All Access for music by Javelin, then started playing a song (“Beyonce”).
When we tested the then-unreleased version of Google Glass software that has now been rolled out to all early adopters of this misunderstood* device, we were looking at its new music features, because thats what were into.
Our first interaction with Google Glasss music player was instructive. When we said “Listen To Javelin,” Google Glass searched Google Play All Access for music by Javelin, then started playing a song (“Beyonce“).
It didnt list a bunch of search results, although Glass could do try, with its six-or-so-lines-of-text display.
Instead, it started playing the song first and then, I had the ability to skip forward or back within a list of search results I couldnt see.
This felt a lot like another Google product: the button on the search box that still provides the vast majority of Googles revenue the one that says “Im Feeling Lucky.” When youre dealing with a next-generation, internet of things-style, “no UI” or perhaps “less UI” computing device the kind that is specifically not supposed to look or feel like a traditional computer, or even smartphone this sort of thing will be way more common.
Rather than hunting through search results on a screen and pecking through them with a keyboard, mouse, or by tapping a screen, well be counting on advanced search, predictive, and push technologies to get directly to whatever were after. (Google Now is another way Google is working on this.)
Ill leave it to the scientists and technologists to figure out how to make “no UI” work, because were just at the beginning of this shift, which will ultimately liberate apps from smartphones and computers. But from this early experience with a “less UI” device, when it comes to music, it looks like well be doing way less “searching,” without necessarily doing less finding. –
*Why “misunderstood”? Because the point of Glass and things like it is actually to help people stop staring at their smartphones all the time, not to get them to stare a new screen all the time. To stare at more screens containing content from Evolver. fm, subscribe.
