What is more glamorous than Google Glass? Think about it, this device isn’t even commercially available yet, and we have been seeing so much about it. Whether it be the legal issues people have with it, or the fact that police and other professionals will be using them on the job, Glass has been captivating our imaginations ever since Google first debuted the plans for this new brand of wearable tech. Basically, if you can get Glass, you become interesting. This is exactly what Virgin Atlantic has done. They were facing a problem that over half of their customers felt that airline travel has become, to put it bluntly, dull. In an effort to spice it up, Virgin Atlantic has acquired the most interesting piece of tech not yet available to the public… Glass. They are using it to make things more interesting for the customer, and to use the actual hardware to speed up and improve the customer experience.
How it works is that for the next six weeks at the London Heathrow Airport, employees will use Glass to take upper class passengers through the check-in process, provide them with information about updates to their flight schedules, and use them to answer any questions a customer may have about their destinations, such as the weather, local events, or even translations. Should everything go well, Virgin Atlantic will consider rolling Glass out to more airports and using them for more pertinent information, such as a passenger’s dietary restrictions or other personal preferences. The fact that Google Glass can be used as such shows us that it is in fact useful for professional purposes. Glass can be used to bring up maps and schematics of buildings for use in dire situations by firefighters. It can also be used for doctors and surgeons to keep better medical records and to improve patient procedures and patient care. While Glass is being marketed as a product for the masses, it is important to see that it is getting its foothold in enterprise first, which is to be expected with a product as new and expensive as this. Hopefully, Glass can make it into the mainstream markets, and we see Glass becoming an even more household name than it is already. Will you pick one up once it goes commercial?