Google has launched its first Augmented Reality application – one that could affect greatly the field of technical documentation in the future. This is probably the most significant announcement in this field since Cherryleaf first began discussing augmented reality and its potential impact on technical documents back in 2008.
In 2008, we said:
There could be a time where you open up the bonnet of your car, point your mobile phone at the engine to (a) identify which part is which and (b) call up instructions on how to remove and replace a particular part.
This application, called Google Goggles, lets you use pictures taken with your mobile phone to search the Web. According to Google,
It’s ideal for things that aren’t easy to describe in words. There’s no need to type or speak your query – all you have to do is open the app, snap a picture, and wait for your search results.
There are a number of videos on YouTube, demonstrating it. Here’s one review:
Google Goggles is currently only available on mobile phones running Google’s Android operating system (version 1.6 firmware onwards).
So what does this mean for technical communicators today? Probably the most important thing you need to do is associate at least one image of your product with:
- Any Web-based user documentation that you may have published
- Your company’s Web site.
At the most basic level, this means checking any images on your Web site and their ALT text information.
For the more cunning of you out there, you could also look at guiding Google Goggles towards your Web site when people are using it to look at your competitors’ products!
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I’m trying to envision what exactly is a picture of the product, especially when I think of products I’ve documented in the past. Once I documented a hardware device that would measure the viscosity of oil running through heavy machinery in a manufacturing plant and send the results to a predictive maintenance database. 🙂
I wonder, how well does a phone take a picture of a computer screen, which would enable users to take a picture of a screenshot with their phone? Does Google Goggles work with screenshots or only physical objects?
For hardware doc, perhaps you’d ensure you’ve got a photo of your hardware along with diagrams? Exterior case, ports, and what the guts look like when you take off the case?
Fascinating. Thanks for mapping Google Goggles to tech comm.
Great comments Anne! Augmented Reality will probably be of more use when documenting hardware rather than software. I suspect Google won’t allow anyone but themselves control what is displayed within Google Goggles, but other applications should allow manufacturers to control what information is delivered (for example, Layar). I’ve mentioned before that bar codes could play a role in linking reality to documentation. Each component could end up having its own bar code.
Does Google Goggles work with screenshots or only physical objects?
It’s in beta, so I doubt it works on screenshots yet. It recognizes paintings, so there’s a fair chance it will recognize screenshots in the future.
Goggles, being from Google, could well be the leader in this market, which is why it’s still important for developers of technical documentation.
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I used Goggles to take a screenshot of the YouTube video above and got results related to Google Goggles.
I took a picture of my Firefox window for this page and got results related to “Table Inspector Information”. (Hmmm…)
I took a picture of my Facebook home page and got results related to Facebook status updates.
I took a picture of my Sirius (Internet radio) screen and got results related to Siriuso. (At the top of the screen, the word “Sirius” is displayed, followed by a circle icon.)
I took a picture of one of my client’s web pages and got results related to my client 🙂
So Google Goggles does work with screenshots. Just thought you’d want to know 🙂
Pretty interesting article!
Augmented Relity would be really helpful in industrial applications, and as Char James-Tanny said, if it works with software, most technical writers would probably have to look at how to leverage this and improve documentation.