Deep Dive: Ivy Ross & Isabelle Olsson on the Early Days of Google Glass

In this installment of the Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive series, Astro Teller explores the origins of Google Glass with designers Ivy Ross and Isabelle Olsson. They discuss the unexpected design and tech challenges the team faced creating such a bold new form factor, the surprising ways people ended up wanting to use Glass, how their backgrounds in art influenced their approach, and the importance of timing when creating new technologies. For more on Glass’s early days, tune into Episode 9 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Supersenses”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlpF2QJNL5Y 00:00 - Introduction 01:43 - How Isabelle wound up at X 03:37 - How Ivy came to X 07:25 - The big challenges Glass was solving 11:04 - The origins of the Glass Explorer Program 11:43 - Glass’s public debut 14:46 - Ivy’s earliest memories of Glass in action 18:37 - How art influenced the design of Glass 22:19 - Glass’s second generation design 27:20 - From sunglasses to monocles: Early design debates 31:30 - Surprising “fringe” uses of Glass in industry 34:33 - Reinventing Glass for industry 35:47 - Why timing matters 41:45 - Memorable team traditions 44:50 - When Glass moved from X to Google 47:41 - Early explorations with the Google Watch 49:37 - Lessons learned from taking moonshots

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