Frustrations when Interacting with Glass
All of the participants experienced usability issues with
Glass. The voice recognition caused frustration amongst
everyone (PF5: “the fact that it wasn’t recognising what I
wanted was very irritating and very frustrating”). For PM2
and PM3, who already have marked difficulties with their
speech through PD, this proved deeply disheartening (PM3
“my voice wasn’t always working…it came up saying ‘try
again’”; PM2’s wife: “he had to shout at it a few times
because obviously his voice is very quiet”). It was noted
that, for PM1, “the voice application is going to have to be
re-engineered and made a bit easier” in order for it to be
usable for someone with PD. These difficulties contrasted
Session: Interactive Technologies for Rehabilitation CHI 2014, One of a CHInd, Toronto, ON, Canada
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with the relative successes these same participants had
when testing Glass in the workshop.
The navigation gestures, namely tapping on the side of the
device, were also problematic in everyday use. There was
more success when using the swiping gesture to navigate
menus however (PM1: “I found that the tapping was quite
difficult… your hand just keeps going”). PM2 also found
this to be a difficult gesture to master “scrolling backwards
and forwards wasn’t too good at times, sometimes you
went too far and it was hard to get back”.