Exploring the HoloLens
I had the chance to get a glimpse at the Microsoft HoloLens last week, which is – as wikipedia puts it – “a pair of mixed reality smartglasses”. As I had to fight with my 16 year old nephew for usage time (which I lost of course), I ended up with about an hour of wearing the glasses. Or headset if you want, it is way bigger than glasses and looks like mixture of a Star Trek visor and ski goggles.
So my self-induced mission was to explore the HoloLens as provided with a two minute verbal introduction to get myself acquainted with the basic concepts of control and usage.
| length | 15 minutes ad-hoc fooling around plus 45 minutes following the mission. |
| proceeding | * at first I went for the gesture/control tutorial * went for 2 two augmented reality apps: an anatomical atlas and a star map * I spent the last few minutes in the browser to have a look at more familiar usages like surfing the web |
| test data | no special test data was used |
| issues | 1. My eyes started to hurt pretty soon until I realized that I forgot to blink while wearing the glasses. Certainly not a software bug, still a topic when we are blurring the borders between software and reallife environment. 2. Language control is somewhat shaky. Might be a non native speaker problem, but when pronouncing "next" I had to speak the a way more open than I would usually do and what I perceive as common pronunciation. 3. There is no anti-aliasing, which makes some objects look rather frayed at the edges. 4. The HoloLens cannot distinguish between your own gestures and those of other people. I could pop up the main menu when someone else was wearing it. Good thing: it didn't crash when getting four gestures at the same time. |
| proof | Following the tutorial I was able to control the thing and have a look around. |
| results | gesture control is pretty intuitive and you get a grab of it pretty quickly. Interestingly enough about half the people I talked to agreed that they were better at controlling it with their weak hand. Maybe they are putting more effort in the gestures then? Blending screen and reality was fascinating at first but became kind of natural pretty quickly. Using it for 3D applications seems suitable, using it for surfing the web was cumbersome, although putting different browser tabs in different positions in the room was nice (cookbook over the stove, holiday reading next to the door). |
| obstacles | I had no instruction manual at hand. Without the 2 minute verbal explanation in the beginning, I would not have been able to start the tutorial. I don't know if the tutorial starts if you start the HoloLens the first time ever, but that would be kind of helpful. |
| outlook | I did not dive into any settings or whatsoever, so that is certainly something I would go for next time. I would also love to give the apps more time individually. |
| feelings | I was pretty happy with the way everything went. Of course it was closer to just goofing around than to actually using it, but all in all it seems pretty mature already and I can certainly imagine areas of applications where it can be pretty useful. |
| learnings | Testing in these contexts goes beyond just testing software (or hardware), but anthropological aspects start to become way more important. Do you get a stiff neck from the weight? I didn't, I can imagine smaller persons might. Than again I had to adjust the headband to maximum, so what if you have an even bigger head? Or what about my dry eyes? |
| adaption | I recommend reading the instruction manual. But then again, if you are just a bit like me you are too excited to read the manual first, so I guess I wouldn't change much. |
As you can see it was more on the fun side, but nothing wrong with that I guess.
