Designing for AI Glasses with Android XR requires a thoughtful approach to user experience, prioritizing comfort and seamless integration with the user's daily life. Apps on glasses should feel like a natural extension of the user's perception, providing convenient access to information without being intrusive.
AI Glasses and Display AI Glasses
AI Glasses are lightweight and portable for all day wear. With built-in speakers, a camera, and microphone; designers and developers are able to build intelligent and hands-free augmented experiences.
Display AI Glasses provide the addition of a small display, giving users a private screen for seeing additional information, harmonizing with audio output.
Design your augmented experience to take into account both AI Glasses variations with displayless and display capabilities.
AI Glasses prioritize multi-modal interactions
Design the user interface for hands-free modalities such as voice or gesture. Carefully consider the limitations of indirect control and less-precise input when designing interactions.
Prioritize glanceable, transient elements
Craft user interfaces with an emphasis on glanceable views and temporary elements, acknowledging the transient nature of interactions on glasses.
Design UI to appear only when needed and recede when the task is complete, minimizing persistent on-screen distractions.
Transparent UI always competes with the real-world
Present information concisely and adaptively, considering the glasses' small field of view, varying focal distances, and potentially dynamic backgrounds.
Optimize typography for legibility to prevent overwhelming the user with information.
Optimize for focus
Design layouts that prioritize essential information, reducing the number of actions and visual elements to maintain user focus.
Thoughtfully manage content density to respect the limited field of view and prevent cognitive overload, ensuring comfortable readability.
Comfort
User comfort is paramount. Avoid overwhelming the user with excessive visual information or audio alerts. Prioritize clear, concise communication and ensure that interactions do not distract from real-world activities, especially when the user is in motion or requires full attention to their surroundings. This unique form factor and its hardware features come with specialized considerations.
- Be transparent about what data you collect, why you collect it, and how it is stored.
- Avoid sudden, distracting visual notifications that could obstruct the user's view at critical moments.
- If your app provides audio, ensure the volume doesn't completely block out environmental sounds. Users must remain aware of their surroundings.
- Avoid UI and motion that could induce motion sickness, such as expecting users to read large amounts of text while walking.
- Account for reading and legibility in a spectrum of possible environments by following Jetpack Compose Glimmer UI best practices.