Telling visionary stories takes more than great tech, it takes imagination, warmth and a devotion to showing a world made better by your inventions.

News of Google's Project Glass lit up web chatter of the design and tech community. On the one hand it was a provocative leap forward, Google stepping boldly toward hardware that is category defining, and on the other showing a vision of the future that is largely uninspiring.

The biggest problem with Glass isn't the potential loss of serendipity, nor the messy distractions, how to deal with all the info noise, the complications of making it real, or even the geeky hardware acting as a socially awkward cue that you might not be really paying attention.

We'll need to work all this out, but let's talk about the Google's vision for this amazing tech. Watch the vision video and you see interactions that will all be familiar: Siri like natural language recognition and commands, location and time notifications, weather forecasting, real-time text and video chat, GPS mapping and location sharing, checking in, sharing photos to social networks, etc... There is a subtle shift in stance, from a more sovereign interaction to one that is more transient. With phones we have a more explicit intentional interaction, Glass is more of a dip-in-and-out of the digital experience. Instead pulling out your phone to read your twitter feed for the whole 20 minute commute home, Glass has been envisioned as more of a light technology augmentation to the real world.

But there's little that's emotionally resonant. It feels like a demonstration of how you'd do all the stuff you do on your iPhone today in your Glass tomorrow. The focus is on performing tasks that highlight features. It comes across like a technology searching for an application.

I don't mean to be down on the tech. When I first saw it I was really excited about the possibilities. This is groundbreaking technology making the screen fully portable and hands free, it's about liberating yourself from the effort required to interact with a phone. Of enhancing your interactions with the world around you. Google's got their engineers making really cool stuff, but when it comes to imagination or emotional resonance; telling a story that makes you connect with and desire what they are making, it's just not there.

Let's look at ways the storytelling could have changed more effectively invite us to imagine a future that's better with Glass.

Helpful insights beyond the moment

Pushing the local forecast into your eye every time you look out the window seems annoying and obnoxious. Technology is pushing it's way into your experience.

Apple shows the same need for insight into weather, but it's prompted by the user who asks about the weather in a city she's clearly packing to visit. The value of the information is greater to the traveller who can't just look out the window and get a pretty good idea about the local weather. By giving her a forecast for New York the phone is more helpful, it's giving her information at a moment where she can make the most use of it. We connect with the experience because we know how difficult it can be to arrive at a destination where we've packed the wrong clothes. It's worth noting that Apple doesn't even show you the results, they don't have to, you fill in the details yourself.

The warmth of connection

Next up Google shows your friend reaching out to see if you want to hang out. Sweet right? But no, it feels like you're forced to translate everything into text instead of simply using your voice to communicate. In the Glass interface chat's a silent activity with beeps and bleeps for feedback. What if instead you could simply chat, you know, with your voice, it could still be asynchronous, it doesn't need to be a phone call. Your voice can also be parsed into text, but giving you both allows for a richer deeper connection. You get the warmth and excitement in your friend's voice, not a text message you have to read.

Thinking a little bit ahead

As you head into the subway Google let's you know the subway's not running. Drat. You've already hoofed it here, now your only option is to walk.

How much more helpful if Glass knows that you usually catch the 6 and tells you that service has been suspended before leaving home. This gives you a chance to grab your bike instead.

Setting your hands free

Speaking of bikes, how did bike riding NOT make it into the video?

Walking is an activity slow enough to stop and pause to check directions. Biking is fast and to do it safely requires both hands. Glass frees your hands up.

Getting a little heads-up display action letting you know your speed and your distance covered would be a great augmentation to the ride.

Helping you remember the important things

Reminders are helpful, but hardly the stuff of great narrative. Google shows setting a reminder to buy tickets to a show. Meh. I mean sure it's something you'd want to remember, but as a story there's little to connect with.

Apple's not all that much better, the girl who's running asks Siri to remind her to call Chris when she gets home. Her speed clearly makes it harder for her to type a reminder, and with Siri she can save one without breaking her stride, but it's so generic we don't really connect. Why? Because saving a reminder with your voice is technologically difficult, and doing it well has taken some serious engineering. but really it's about as exciting as watching someone write a list. The magical experience of reminders is when they help you remember the thing you'd have otherwise forgotten, and maybe picking something that would be a real shame to miss.

Walking up to your front door and getting a reminder to call dad and wish him a happy birthday? Now that's something we can all connect to and see the value.

Making location awareness magic

It's this kind of demonstration that seems like a gratuitous use of technology. Isn't the big red signage enough of a confirmation that you've arrived?

Duplicating the busy information density we experience in an urban environment isn't an experience you'd really want to sign up for. If you wanted to go seriously visionary why not propose a not-too-distant future where all the signs and advertisements screaming for your attention have been removed. The beauty and dignity of architecture is preserved as the signage is moved into our smart devices like Glass. Then pushing the bookstore name to me becomes helpful.

So next there's an opportunity to interact with with this guy.

But you don't take it. You ask your Glass eyepiece instead, it gives you directions for walking 20 feet. There's a rosy picture of the future. No more interactions with strangers, no basic self sufficiency.

There's a few ways Google could have taken this to make it more compelling.

Make the store unbelievably busy so that it would be a long wait till you could ask someone for the location of the music section, at least then you're not being anti-social you're just resourceful. But still, bookstores have some of the most dependable signage, finding the right section isn't really all that hard.

What if instead, you could walk into the supermarket and as you walk the isles Glass uses your location and shopping list to simply pop-up items for you to grab from the shelf? Now you're doing something you can't really do today. It's helpful, and kind of cool. There's no way you could ask the cashier to show you where all the items on your shopping list are located. With Glass shopping list assistance you're able to walk into a store you've never visited, grab everything on your shopping list which happens to have been updated by your partner just a moment ago, and leave, sure that you've got everything you need.

Continuing in the bookstore Google shows you checking to see if your friend has arrived at the bookstore yet. No you don't just walk out to the street or wait for him to come grab you, you use Glass to seek his location and it tells you he's half a block away.

Creepyness aside, it's not saving you from a lot of work or discomfort. You could have just stepped out to wait for your pal on the street. Just cause you can do it doesn't mean it's inspiring or visionary. Location awareness of other people is a hard thing to do right. Even with friends there's lots of privacy issues, and anyone who's seriously tried to make apps that leverage the power of tracking has ended up with low adoption or swift negative reactions.

Moving on you follow your buddy to a nearby coffee truck. Your first instinct is to check in. Seriously? OK, maybe Google needed to show it to compete with Foursquare, but come on, this isn't particularly engaging for us viewers.

Also, one day in the future you'll still need to manually check in? If checking in is your thing, can't it just be something background and automatic, or at least less of a process? In the Glass vision it would be the same amount of work to do it with your phone.

Improving connections

So you get a cup of joe and then part ways with Paul.

Sure there's a cut or two to edit out the stuff that's not showing off Glass, but this makes the story mostly about you using your friend Paul to find a good cup of coffee which is something you could have just messaged him about. The heavy focus on showing off the technology has robbed the story of its humanity. First you didn't chat with the bookstore clerk, then you only meet up with a pal to get insider info. You seem like a cold jerk.

Apple takes a totally different approach to telling the story with Facetime. The phone is used to bridge the gap, to overcome the barriers of physical space.

The phone frames the entire interaction but instead of getting in the way it falls to the background. You quickly find yourself transported into a deeply intimate moment, the story connects instantly, and you empathize with the people and appreciate how the technology makes this kind of emotional connection possible. The people here clearly care for one another and value spending this moment together.

After parting ways you come across a cool piece of street art. You want to share it and in a second can capture the image and upload it.

The process is simple, simpler and easier than pulling out a camera. It's effortless and really shows a sweet way to capture images. Here again the magic of the tech is clear, but the story fails. Street art is hip, but people are what matters, humans are innately drawn to faces.

What about grabbing a few photos of your buddy while hanging out?

And how cool would it be if it auto recognized your friend and added the pictures to his image stream too?

The last scene is easily the most enchanting. It feels a bit contrived, but we're willing to overlook it because it actually shows how this technology might bring us closer together.

It's one way video chat at first, and because there's no camera looking at your face your friend can't see you. What's the next best thing? Sharing your view.

It's a delightful ending for an otherwise uninspiring story. But it didn't need to be that way. When we tell stories, especially around a future shaped by new technology it's important to keep the focus on people. Our gadgets and tools aren't the point, they are means, not the ends. Every twist and turn in the story should help us see a world that is made better, not just different. When you present a vision, strive to deliver a story with deep emotional resonance. We don't need the technology to be perfect, or the applications mindblowing, but we do need to see through it to the deeper more essential need, that is our desire to be connected, to have meaning and share life with one another.

Delivering enchanting experiences

Siri delivers a nifty image.

Google, Glass was made to best this! Looking into bright glowing phone to try to match it against the night sky would be a terrible experience.

With Glass you simply look skyward. Glass can magically connect the stars for you.

Now that's the way to learn about the night sky.

It has never been easy to demonstrate the value of interaction design, but the ubiquity of video as communication tool has helped a lot. Video is a great way to reach online audiences: It is easily accessed on YouTube and Vimeo, and it is expected to be short and to the point. With little investment, design firms can capture high-quality video with any number of relatively low-cost cameras, and use powerful editing tools to tell our stories. When a video is done well, it helps humanize the design, and gives a peek into the methods behind it.

At Cooper, we have been experimenting with video, and we pay attention to what others are doing in that space. As we share more about our process, we are also changing our clients' and the general public's expectations of disclosure. While it's a great idea in theory, in practice we find that finding the right formula can be tricky. For example, video is a more spectacular and emotionally effective medium than static blog posts, but subtle mistakes in tone and presentation run the risk of coming off as pretentious, overproduced, off-topic or just downright goofy. Here are three big things we've noted about how to get it right.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his inaugural address as the 32th President of the United States, uttered his now famous phrase “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” How right he was.

He further identified his target as “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” He spoke early in 1933, during the darkest days of the American depression, when millions were out of work, no safety nets existed to help them, and there was no recovery in sight. What’s more, the specter of European Nazism, with its saber rattling, and strident, irrational racism, was waxing. In the face of these actual reasons to be afraid, Roosevelt fingered the real danger: irrational fear; fear for its own sake; being afraid simply because it’s easier than not being afraid.

Largely, the nation heeded Roosevelt’s admonition. We refused to succumb to fear, the economy recovered, we vanquished our foes, and emerged as the world leader for the rest of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, in the 21st century, we have quite failed Roosevelt. We have become a terrified nation and live in a culture of fear. We act afraid and we let baseless fear drive our choices. Mutual trust is the basis of civilization, and our nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror is unraveling the fabric of our society.

When you work at a design company you are surrounded by designers. They are all intelligent, perceptive, have a great sense of humor, and they often indulge in good-natured ribbing. They also have Photoshop skills.

There's always laughter in the hallways, funny pictures on the walls, and occasionally the funny pictures make it to email. Here's an amusing exchange that took place on an internal email thread a couple of weeks ago.

One of our smart designers, Golden Krishna, was rebuffed by Microsoft Office with a particularly unhelpful error message. Grabbing a screen image, he clipped it, pasted it into an email, and posted it to his colleagues. Several members of the staff immediately pounced.

Here's what Golden first posted:

He was being sardonic, pointing out just how unhelpful error messages can be. Another smart designer, Glen, responded immediately with this doctored error message:

And that opened the floodgates.

This first week of August has been good fun from start to finish! Jim, Faith, and Rock Health agilely went from stories to a plan of action.

Alan's post on ideas, innovation, and creative teams reminded us of an interesting perspective on innovation from Clay Christensen and Art Markman about busting innovation myths.

We took a break to watch the Giants game with our amazing summer interns Mo and Brendan.

Today, Golden, Greg, and Jenea are doing their part at Device Design Day. Get some design goodness of your own at in the upcoming Visual Interface Design session August 15-16.

Other interesting scoops this week

I just changed from a Wintel machine, which I've used for over 20 years, to a Mac. I had dragged my feet with Office 03 so long that people were starting to notice. I no longer could put off upgrading to the "new" Office interface.

Yes, I do not like the ribbon, but that really wasn't the problem. The real problem was that the changes Microsoft made to the Office Suite accomplished nothing and yet came at a high cost.

The new Office UI is very different but is not better. That is a complaint only old farts make (because they know the old ways), so Microsoft can just move ahead ignoring it. I wrestled with it for awhile, and then I figured, if I have to learn something new, why not learn Mac Keynote? I tried it, and found it was a modest improvement over PowerPoint, but that it didn't aggravate me so much because I no longer expected it to behave the same as the old version as I did with PowerPoint.

Pip Coburn, in The Change Function, says that users will change when the benefit of changing is greater than the perceived pain of making the change. That's the operative element here. There was no benefit and lots of pain. Microsoft didn't improve PowerPoint, they just moved the deck chairs around. That's pathetic and not the behavior of a market leader. FAIL.

Just for the record, I reject the argument that it is a zero-sum game between experienced and new users. That trade-off does exist, but only when physical manipulation is involved, such as twitch games, aircraft controls, and the like. Good UI is, in general, good for both experts and beginners alike.

I do not believe Microsoft's assertions that the ribbon is easy to learn. If you feed someone rotten fishheads for a while, then switch them over to a diet of fresh fishheads, they will be happier. You can then tout the statistical "fact" that "users prefer fresh fishheads," even though the truth is that they HATE fishheads. That, I believe, is how Microsoft gets its rationale for UI changes.

Imagine the places you will go. The richness of your new experience, when the previously opaque meaning of foreign signs is now clear. You are no longer forced to wander the streets, wondering what kinds of shops you are passing. You can understand signs regarding public transportation, tourism and safety. You sit down at a restaurant and with the help of Word Lens you can read the menu. The waiter approaches and quickly utters something, and waits attentively for your response. You glance at your iPhone... nothing. You flash a pained smile back, mutely trying to communicate you don’t understand. Word Lens is lame because it’s only half of the solution. You’re dumb because you can’t speak and really communicate.

Don’t get me wrong, Word Lens is a great step forward. It will help with some of the anxieties of travel, in particular in using and navigating complex transportation systems. These kinds of tasks don’t really require two-way communication. Simply reading and understanding your options is a major win.

Trying to buy tickets for the Tokyo subway, would have been nice to have Word Lens.

But, you don’t need to read to understand what a particular storefront offers. You just look at what’s on the shelves.

Hong Kong street scene, no translation needed for understanding

You don’t really need translation help for safety related issues. These were solved a long time ago with universal picture language.

Where safety is concerned pictures have long sufficed, Parisian "walk" pictograph

The hardest part of travel isn’t understanding, it is being understood: Asking for directions, ordering food, asking for a receipt. It’s frustrating to struggle at expressing your needs.

Word Lens leaves you with a little more input, but a frustrating lack of output. Now you may understand, but you still can’t say a damn thing.

The speed and accuracy of the underlying technology is a breakthrough. The transparency and dead-simplicity of the interface is exactly how visual hand-held translator should work. As many people have commented Word Lens delivers on the promise of augmented reality. This technology shows great potential and will most certainly be adapted and built upon.

But, until we get a voice, a way to communicate back, Word Lens is little more than an amazing party trick.

Typing into Google translate lacks the elegance, speed and simplicity of the Word Lens interface, but it does get you to "speak up" for yourself. How could Word Lens improve upon this?

A couple of girls use Google Translate to order Indian food

“We don't finish the movies, we just release them.” -- John Lasseter of Pixar

It’s easy to think of design as an ongoing iterative process, a constant refining that never reaches an objective “end.” It is especially easy to think of software in this way. Because code isn’t static, design of software is relatively dynamic, able in many situations to alter direction or incorporate new functionality without overturning initial design-framework decisions. While this can be true, it is also possible for design to reach a state which is done. Not simply done for the next release, but where design reaches finality. The design no longer carries the evolution of the product forward.

Once design reaches a stage in which the difference between versions is more window-dressing, or a change in interaction approach, rather than a realization of deeper functional improvements, design is done. When the ideas on how to improve a design no longer come, when the designers can no longer see a way to improve the idea, it is done. It isn’t that someone else couldn’t take the idea and evolve it, but that the stewards of the design reach a point where their collective imagination can’t move the product forward.

Design which is not done

It’s easy to find examples of design which isn’t done. Lots of first generation software is released delivering basic functionality. Later versions fill out with functionality, growing to meet the latent potential in the first version. This design isn’t done.

Early designs of Evernote promised much more than was delivered. Successive versions cast and recast the design until the initial flaws could be worked out. Early versions provided little more than a limited word processor that stored stuff in the cloud. The interaction paradigm was a little strange and frustrating. Evernote continues to be a design in process. Functionality continues to evolve and improve with each release; the design isn’t done.

Mature software may not be done either. Photoshop versions 5, 7 and 8 delivered significant design shifts. Paradigms for working with text, the inclusion of vector images and interface for handling of RAW images marked major departures from previous versions. As an 11-year old product the design of Photoshop accomplished remarkable adaptation and revealed the “incompleteness” of prior designs. Of course the design leveraged advances in technology which were not available for earlier versions, but that’s the point. The design wasn’t done, design could still be used to improve the program, to advance what it did and how it did it.

Design of non-software products may also reveal a level of “not done.” A baby stroller from BumbleRide is “done” in the sense that you can purchase one and it works. The design is largely coherent and shows evidence of finish. But even here the design isn’t finished. A comparison of the 2008 and 2009 versions shows significant advancement of the design even though each of the versions was sold as a completed design. Wheels gained quick-release, the safety harness adopted a single button release, and the sun hood extended for more coverage. So is the design done now? I’d argue no. Improvements in ergonomics, materials, and signage all provide ripe areas for the design to continue to evolve.

When it reaches "perfection"

Design isn’t done when it reaches a pinnacle of efficiency or goodness. Done isn’t really a measure of quality or perfection. Many products never reach any level of quality or refinement. They represent evolutionary dead ends, still-born ideas with no potential in which to grow. They are poorly conceived, even if executed well. Crappy products may arguably be done before they are ever built or coded. The lack of vision from the start dooms the product to an evolutionary dead-end before it’s even born. If perfection is the measure of done we don’t have any way to agree on what is perfect or good. Perfect doesn’t give us a way to evaluate done.

When it feels done

Subjective evaluations by the creator may be acceptable in the realm of art. Artists work until the piece is “done;” till they feel the idea has been expressed. Design of products whether software or hardware need more objective measures than feelings. In part, designers need this because the act of creation relies on a whole team, not just an individual. We also need measures because products exist in a marketplace; there are deadlines, ship dates, feature sets, marketing and sales efforts, which require more clarity around when the design will be done.

When the time or money runs out

For consultants, work is “done” when the contract (time) is up. Projects are scoped to meet specific deadlines and requirements which fit those timelines. Design deliverables are iterative, each pass we give moves a level deeper and we work out more of the design details. We give great value for our time, but design is “done” when we run out of time. Our design is rarely done in the sense that every detail has not been worked out, all the possible problems have not solved. We work down from larger more fundamental patterns and frameworks, iteratively filling in the details. The big picture may be done when we deliver, but often it is internal product owners or developers who will actually “finish” the design.

When the requirements are met

It could be argued that design is “done” when the initial requirements have been met. It’s done enough to release a version, but it’s not really done. After the product ships the design team refines the design, adding in features or fixing issues which shipped in the previous version. The designers work to fulfill the full potential of the product. As long as their work produces advancements the design isn’t done.

When innovation plateaus

Design is done when its evolution plateaus. A couple of versions are released with little more than rearranging the deck chairs. Rework or changes to the interface reflect passing fashions rather than fundamental shifts in direction or functionality. Innovations in the marketplace or in technological breakthroughs are not incorporated or addressed in the design. Evolution grinds to a halt, the product ceases to advance in meaningful ways.

Design continues on many products long after the design is done. Design effort is wasted in chasing a market rather than leading one. Products become bloated with features which compromise the clarity achieved when the design reached “done.” Features are designed which don’t evolve the product; they complicate the vision reaching to be all things to all people, ultimately hobbling the product. The design of Microsoft Word has delivered little beyond version 5.1. It is a quite usable word processor, but the design for word processing was solid in 1991, in the subsequent releases little was advanced. Features where added that did little to improve the word processing experience. The design also failed to take advantage of shifts in the marketplace or technology. Five versions later Word is still largely a pretty good word processor. While much has changed in the interface switching interaction paradigms from menus to the ribbon can hardly be thought of as a fundamental shift in functionality. Word hasn’t evolved so much as changed it’s wardrobe.

Some products manage to react to changes in technology or marketplace. The design accommodates changing needs and opportunities. The product evolves through design to include new functionality, utility and continues to add life to the product. While Adobe Acrobat Pro has struggled with its share of bloating and incessant updates, the design of the program has continued to evolve. From humble beginnings of a reader/writer for portable documents, Acrobat has incorporated new functionality unimaginable when the product was initially designed; OCR of text, automatic creation of interactive forms, document markup, digital signing and distributed workflows. The integration of this new functionality has stumbled at times, but Acrobat X delivers a coherent, usable evolution of a product that is more than 17 years old. What was just latent potential in the embryonic design of the first versions of the product has been realized.

Some products are so deeply bound to a specific paradigm that the only reasonable evolution is an entirely different approach. The original design is done. A new product, with a different design, is created to address new technology, and a new marketplace. The original iPod‘s design is done. The scroll-wheel/menu design of an mp3s player was groundbreaking and brilliant, and it was well-executed. At some point it became clear that this design was done; it couldn’t evolve while maintaining the same core design. The only road forward was to abandon this “done” design, and adopt a new paradigm. The result was the iPod Touch. The shift was more than simply adding a bigger screen with touch input; what the product could do radically shifted.

Why does it matter?

It is important to acknowledge that design can reach a place of “done.” If we don’t, we may end up fooling ourselves that we are moving products forward when we are really just treading water. If we can’t step back and evaluate whether a design is done, we may continue to put effort into a product which we can’t improve. We will continue to release products that don’t help people achieve their goals, or worse--damage great products by bloating them with features no one needs. Knowing when the design is done allows us to recognize when our efforts will be productive and when our efforts will be wasted. When design is done it’s time to move on, to take up new challenges or products and start designing again.

The best public transit experiences provide riders with wayfinding and signaling which makes everyone, from tourist to commuter, able to navigate the system like a pro. People who are new can easily understand which train to catch, where to get on, when to transfer and when to get off. Those who ride it every day are able to relax, focus on entertainment or reading, and when their stop is reached, gracefully exit without confusion.

Every morning I ride the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train from Berkeley to San Francisco. When I was new to BART, I spent my commute worrying that I was getting on the wrong train or missing my transfer. Now that I’m a regular, I stress about running to catch my train, and wonder whether I should try to cram myself into the packed car or wait for the next one which will have space.

There are many clever solutions that would rely on location-aware smart phones, but with over 30 miles of tunnels, cell signal is unreliable, if available at all. There are apps such as iBart Live which give riders access to live BART schedules on mobile devices. When these work, some of the trouble catching the right train and transferring is alleviated. When they don’t, because there is no signal or because the data is inaccurate, riders feel stranded and annoyed. At some point, the telecom infrastructure will be reliable enough to provide consistent, good information; but even then, there's will be more to be done to make things straightforward and easy for riders.

Outside the station

Riders have no visibility into the live train schedule until they reach the platform. Often this means running down the escalator as soon as you realize the train with the open doors is YOUR train, only to have the doors close before you can reach them.

On the outside there is no way to know which train is approaching the station

Give a heads-up to people before they enter the station. Knowing that my train is due in one minute I’d rush sooner and be able to make my train. Knowing that that the train I hear isn’t mine would allow me to step aside to let those who are tying to catch it move ahead.

I’m going to call it. Apple won on this one.

The whole host of Latin-derived diacritical characters (such as ç, č, & ĉ) are too large to fit into a standard keyboard. The methods by which various operating systems have provided access to them have, in all but one case, sucked.

This sucks. It's hard to access and takes way too much visual hunting, not to mention having to "select" and "copy" the character to the clipboard.