AI Glasses: Seeing the Future 👓✨
Tech
🎧
For over ten years, Google designers have been exploring interfaces for transparent displays, culminating in Jetpack Compose Glimmer. This design system addresses the unique challenges of AI glasses, which utilize additive displays—devices that project light directly onto a user’s field of vision. Unlike traditional screens, these displays cannot create black, presenting developers with a fundamental shift in design. Developers must now utilize dark surfaces and bright content to avoid battery drain and visual distortion, known as halation. Measurements are now taken in visual angles, reflecting the perceived depth of the display—approximately an arm’s length. Furthermore, the system employs slower notification transitions and “focus rings” to minimize distraction and ensure responsive user interaction.
THE RISE OF DISPLAY AI GLASSES
For over a decade, Google’s design team has been pioneering the development of interfaces specifically tailored for transparent displays. This ambitious undertaking has culminated in Jetpack Compose Glimmer, a revolutionary design system shifting the focus from traditional pixel-based design to designing with light itself. This represents a fundamental change for developers and data scientists accustomed to designing for the limitations of LCD or OLED screens, demanding a completely new approach to user interface creation.
DESIGNING FOR ADDITIVE DISPLAYS
Traditional display technologies, such as LCD and OLED, rely on blocking light to create black. However, AI glasses utilize additive displays, which simply add light to the user’s field of vision. Crucially, these displays cannot produce true black, nor can they darken the surrounding environment. In an additive display, black is inherently 100% transparent – it’s a void, not a color. Consequently, standard Material Design cards, with their light surfaces and dark text, become problematic, draining battery life and generating “halation.” Halation is the effect of bright light bleeding into darker areas, rendering text illegible. To overcome this, developers must adopt a fundamentally different strategy: utilizing dark surfaces and bright content, effectively creating a “clean plate” upon which digital elements can harmonize with the physical world without introducing distracting glare.
TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR SPATIAL UI
Designing for transparent spatial environments necessitates a departure from conventional measurement techniques. Developers traditionally measure UI in pixels or points, but these units become irrelevant when dealing with projected light. Instead, Google’s team now measures UI in visual angles or degrees, reflecting the perceived depth of the display. The display in these glasses is projected at a perceived depth of 1 meter – roughly an arm’s length – requiring the user to actively shift their focus between the background and the UI. To ensure legibility, Google established a minimum readable text size of 0.6 degrees, guaranteeing that the interface remains “glanceable” across diverse environments. Furthermore, Google modified Google Sans Flex, adjusting its optical size axis to improve letter distinctiveness and facilitate accurate visibility calculations, specifically focusing on additive contrast ratio ((Environment Brightness + Display Brightness) / Display Brightness).
This article is AI-synthesized from public sources and may not reflect original reporting.