How might Google’s Project Glass glasses be adopted?

Google Glass is one of the most high-profile, and well funded, beta tests we’ve yet to see. But it’s not just the select few who make it to the “special pick-up experience” who will contribute to the development of this product; Google are also subtly inviting people to shape and define the brand too. Their #IfIHadGlass launch campaign cuts through the exclusivity of the physical product and encourages everyone to imagine how their worlds might look through Google Glass. This approach starts the important process of building stories and emotion around the technology, taking Google Glass from a cool gadget to a loved brand. That said, it’s gonna take a lot more than that to convince me to trot round Waitrose sporting a pair in Tangerine.

Camilla Grey, strategist, Digit

Marketeers will always focus on the positives when trying to drive through a new revolution. Squeaky clean, family friendly, humanity friendly visions seen though rose tinted glass. As a child of the grot hole that is the internet, I see some alternative visions containing “some nudity”, and perhaps some other post watershed content infiltrating the user’s augmented view of the world. Maybe your husband of 40 years can be youthfully reconstructed from old photos for the wearer, maybe dead friends can be there to enjoy your birthday once again. Am I sounding like Charlie Brooker?

Nicolas Roope, co-founder, Poke

Wearable POV devices, combined with increasingly hefty broadband speeds, will lead to all sorts of exciting and terrifying new broadcast opportunities. Live footage from multiple perspectives has massive implications for education, law enforcement and entertainment (and piracy), among other things. Put all this together, and you’ve got yourself a self-surveillance society, all channeled through corporate devices and services. Orwellian nightmare aside, the most horrifying implication of this is that all television will ultimately become You’ve Been Framed, 24/7. Harry Hill had better clear his schedule. 

Daniel  Benneworth-Gray, independent designer

The biggest stumbling block to the advancement of wearable technology is people being self-conscious. I think those that have to use it as part of their work will embrace Google Glass and the inevitable copycats. Police forces, private security staff and traffic wardens will become mini mobile CCTV units, recording endless confrontations and crime and beaming the information to a linked network. As for the general public, it will really take off when people can’t see you are wearing it – think contact lens size mini cameras. However, I am sure the early adopters are already preparing their sleeping bags to queue up and hand their money over.

James Greenfield, creative director, Design Studio