Two decades after Marty McFly Jr. wore video glasses in Back to the Future II, Silicon Valley hoped to change the face of eyewear. In 2014, Google piloted its first edition of smart eyeglasses. This wearable technology presents information, like weather alerts and text messages, directly in the user’s field of vision using augmented reality (Tech Target).
Because it was a pilot and not a formal launch, the Google team focused on gaining insights into how the consumer interacted with the product, rather than having a perfected version of the glasses at that point (Bentley University). This was a completely revolutionary technology that the public had not interacted with before, so Google needed to understand how their glasses could fit into people’s lives. This is where behavioral science became integral to the product launch.
“Behavioral science – from cognitive psychology, to behavioral economics, to social psychology – offers a framework to understand the impact that context and cues have on people’s decision making. The greatest innovation in the world will fail if it is not tailored to the context in which it will be used” (Kantar).
It was pretty clear that soon after the glasses were released that Google had missed the mark. Consumers didn’t really understand how the glasses were supposed to be an improvement from the capabilities of their smartphones. The high-tech “phone for your face” was reminiscent of a Star Trek look that many considered geeky and unflattering to wear in public. Additionally, businesses and organizations worried that the glasses would record everything– a privacy concern for hospitals, casinos, and other places where confidentiality is important (Bentley University).
Pilots are meant to have issues. Many times these issues translate to insights that the designers can iterate on to create a better and more useful product. By no means was the Google glass a total failure, but if certain behavioral design strategies were implemented at the beginning of the design process, the Google Glass team might have been able to realize the flaws in the product before spending millions of dollars in the piloting phase.
Based on behavioral science principles, we determined two important considerations necessary for the beginning stages of developing any innovation, whether it be a product, service, or system.
1. Identify the problem you are trying to solve.
Instead of identifying the problem that Google glass would solve, Google let the users define how the glasses could benefit their lives. When Google released the glasses, they asked consumers to “submit photographs and videos that communicated who they were and what they would do with their Google Glass.” (Market Week).
Users didn’t respond well to this because they were overwhelmed by the number of options they had. This occurrence is studied in behavioral science and is referred to as choice overload or decision paralysis. When faced with too many options, users actually have a more difficult time choosing anything (The Decision Lab). In the minds of many consumers, having countless choices about what problem the glasses could solve actually ended up being a problem unto itself.
2. Identify the target audience
In addition to not explaining what the glasses were for, the target audience also wasn’t clear. According to marketing expert Laura Lake for The Balance Small Business, a target audience is the “demographic of people most likely to be interested in a company's product or service.”
Google’s first round of testing was initially for software developers. Later on it was opened up to consumers that Google specifically recruited because they had won their contest for the coolest uses of the Google Glass (Market Week). Essentially, Google artificially created a target audience rather than discovering one.
While creating an audience was a deliberate marketing strategy, it likely introduced selection bias. Selection bias is the tendency for researchers to choose who their user group is, and “is usually associated with research where the selection of participants isn’t random” (Institute for Work and Health). If they had organically identified a target audience by doing an initial test on a random user group, Google could have more easily seen how the broad range of audiences responded to the glasses and chosen the most appropriate audience to design for.
Conclusion
If you feel like these considerations are basic design-thinking principles, you are exactly right! We aren’t reinventing the wheel here, these considerations are popular because they work. Think of them as a launching point to position your offering in context to your user before committing extensive time and money to the project.
Large companies like Google are not infallible, which demonstrates that even the most powerful technology still relies on the fundamentals of behavioral science in order to be successful in the market. There is still a lot to be understood about where behavioral science fits into the design process. In the next blog, we will explore the focused and intentional use of behavioral design to achieve positive user outcomes. Be on the lookout for more content as we continue the series!
Writing By:
Nia-Simone Eccleston, Design Strategist Apprentice
Nia-Simone Eccleston is a 2022 graduate of the Georgia Tech Industrial Design program, BSc. She has many years of experience in journalistic writing and has contributed as a design researcher for various social impact projects.
Odiraa Okala, Public Health Innovation Analyst
Odiraa is a Master of Public Health Candidate at Saint Louis University in Missouri. He has a concentration in Behavioral Science and Health Education and has extensive experience in public policy and human-centered design thinking.
