Hello, this is YOSHIMURA researching wearable devices at ATL. Since I have a chance to experience especially Google Glass among Android relevance wearable devices and I make Glassware a little bit, I want to write about it.
Google Glass
Most of you know what Google Glass is; it is a glass-shaped AR device presented in Google I/O 2012, which has a clear display, gyro, touchpad, camera, close-sensor, microphone, bone conduction transducer, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth Smart. The CPU/GPU/Memory has the same quality as the one in Nexus S, and it is operated with Android 4.4. It is one of the Android devices but it does not have the UX mainly touching as the one in normal mobile phones. It has the UX of information support of “Right Now At This Moment” in order for users to provide feedback by starting up the application (Glassware) under control of voice command and then by inserting the event(Card) into the timeline.
Pomodoro Timer
Glassware, which we are going to make from now on in 3 batches, is called Pomodoro Timer. Pomodoro technique is a time management method, which uses a timer to break down work into intervals traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short 5 minutes breaks to improve mental agility. The timer is the one we are going to use. The timer is just simple but people often seek these points which make us sweat; 1) It does not have a distracting UI, 2) It keeps clicking during the concentration time to keep you mentally concentrated, and 3) You can check the time as often as you want.
Workflow
As we make Glassware, we want to walk through two phases.
Phase 1: Prototyping
In this phase you visualize an idea and judge its feasibility and usefulness. If you can obtain a device at this point, of course, it’s good, but our first priority is to make one quick and easy more than anything.
Phase 2: Porting
This is the phase which you apply the prototype to a real device and optimize its UI/UX, etc.
Development environment
It is said that there are two ways of Glassware development, Mirror API and GDK(Glass Development Kit) but what are those?
Mirror API can insert Card to Google Glass from outside of the web service, etc. and belongs to an API group which can provide us such as Google Now. On the other hand, GDK is a development kit used on the Android SDK, and it allows you to develop Glassware directly operated by Google Glass with Android Studio.
So, here let’s start development with GDK.
Android Studio
こWhen you wanted to develop Android, there was no choice other than Eclipse, but it’s true that this environment compares poorly with other mobile environment. The situation has been, however, changed since a new development called Android Studio. It was announced at Google I/O 2013.
Android Studio is a development environment where it consolidates the smart build tool Gradle and Android-relevance functionalities (such as layout preview and debugger, etc.) into IntelliJ IDEA introducing powerful complementary functionalities and sophisticated re-factoring support functionalities, which solves the troubles mentioned before in the Eclipse-base environment.
Creation of Project
First of all, create a project by starting up Android Studio, then New Project or File > New Project…
Next, you can choose a target device. You don’t do incremental development, but you will roughly make it by mainly using your Android device (Nexus 5). Choose Phone and Tablet, API19 and then enter a name. Go on to the next.
Next, choose Blank Activity and go on to the next.
At last, enter an Activity name, a layout name, and a title name, and then finish creating the project.
Once you finish it, the layout screen is displayed.
This is all finished quickly once the creation of skeleton is completed.
Slight Adjustment
You can start building as it is, but make a slight adjustment so that Glassware can be used as a prototype.
Change the theme into Theme.DevideDefault base
As Glass has a clear screen, I think it is the best not to let extra light out of the sight. In addition, you do not use ActionBar at all in Glass. For these reasons, we mainly use Theme.DeviceDefault.NoActionBar and delete ActionBar after you get the background in black.
To Landscape mode
The screen of Glass is rectangular and it does not turn around obviously. So, force screenOrientation=”landscape”in AndroidManifest.xml.
After implementation, you will see the screen like this;
Skeleton is finished!
So, now you have finished skeleton, and you are ready for development in Android Studio.
For the next time, we are going to make a prototype of Glassware.