As the world evolves our need to consume information grows at an exponential rate. Since the advent of the screen our  for appetite for smaller, better screens to display information has increased.  Developments in Virtual and Augmented Reality have provided a way of displaying information in different formats.

We have in recent times been distracted by the mobile phone and the ability to view information 24×7 on what we want and need. This has become a distraction to many whilst walking , eating and unfortunatley whilst driving!

Recent developments in technology have introduced smart glasses that can project information from your mobile device on to the glass such as Focals 2.0 by North which will soon be available as version 2.0. If glasses are not your thing then contact lenses maybe and Mojo Vision recently announced a smart contact lens.

Used in the right way and environments these advancements will bring great benefit to us, such as giving work instructions, directions whilst walking, words to a speech whilst presenting. The list goes on.

The risk of using these technologies with things we should not is already known in some cases, such as Mobiles and Driving.

Tracking of eye movement is also becoming more main stream and are being added to cars to check our ability to look at the road and also control things. Companies such as SmartEye is developing solutions that are looking at identification, alertness to sleepiness for vehicles.  Within business use the latest version of the Hololens uses eye tracking to help display and select items within the headset. Perhaps this type technology will detect the use of Smart Eyes technology in the future and not start a car until removed.

Heads Up Displays are being used to project information to glass in the car to allow the driver to maintain road contact with their eyes whilst seeing vital information such as speed.

I hope that the future should see the next level of developments bringing interaction with the environment or things we are interacting with. For example the ability for a device for our eyes to switch off automatically whilst driving or at least display information in a Heads Up Display format from the car.

Intergration will be key between these types of systems going forward to increase the usefulness in the right environment and reduce the distraction elements in the wrong environments.