As I planned to attend Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for the first time this year, I scrolled through tons of emails about artificial intelligence, connected devices, and just about every other buzzword in the industry today. But one email immediately stood out: jinx on the lawnmower.
Husqvarna engineers devised a brilliant PR move to draw more attention to the company’s line of robotic lawn mowers by creating something that’s actually useless.your hope is slim actually Play Doom on your Husqvarna automatic lawn mower NERA, but why wouldn’t you want to give it a try?
People in several countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa who own a Husqvarna autonomous lawn mower NERA can sign up for the Doom beta and get those mowers revving up when the official update is released in April.
This is one of the coolest things we saw at MWC 2024, but it also raises an interesting question. As we continue to gamify household chores through games like Pokemon Smile, encouraging us to keep doing mundane but important things, how far should the gamification of technology go? Do we need full-blown games on smart glasses, or will a clever Pokemon Go-style game be enough to get us moving our legs after sitting in our chairs for hours?
Follow the breadcrumb trail
If Husqvarna’s YouTube channel is any indication, the company’s marketing techniques may have paid off. Most of the videos on their channel only have a few hundred views at most, and often focus on the technology behind how lawnmowers work and how they can improve your life.
However, the Husqvarna x Doom project video has been viewed over 46,000 times, which is 2,000 more than the number of subscribers to the channel.If the goal is to make people aware of the product instead of Sell Certain feature, it’s clear this strategy might work.
I recently spoke with Bobak Tavangar, CEO of Brilliant Labs and founder of the Brilliant Labs Frame, a new set of smart glasses due in April that promise to blend artificial intelligence into a slim, wearable frame. As one body. The company’s vision is ambitious, but ultimately it’s still limited by what current technology can offer.
Tavangar described the company’s ultimate vision for how Noa, Brilliant Labs’ artificial intelligence robot, can help you stick to your diet plan by recognizing the foods it sees through its camera and gently guiding you toward your goals. This is just one of many examples Tavangar uses when we discuss the company making glasses powered by personalized, proactive personal AI assistants.
But this vision may only impress some people before they get on with their normal lives without investing in the product’s future potential. If not for one thing, it’s this: being able to play games like Doom without having to look down at your phone.
Granted, Doom (1993) had limited appeal to non-gamers, and even then, it had limited appeal to casual gamers. This classic game paved the way for games that people will love to play in 2024, but the game itself is a small seed that helps people understand the potential of the gadgets we take for granted in our lives.
Imagine if a pair of glasses — like the Oppo Air Glass 3 I wore at MWC 2024 (pictured above) or the upcoming Brilliant Labs Frame — could play games right in front of our eyes simply by leveraging the power of the phone in our pocket , how useful will these types of products be once fully realized?
Brilliant Labs’ announcement of artificial intelligence on smart glasses isn’t “new” per se, but it does sound better than what I’m used to. After all, Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses can already do many of these things to some extent. So what’s stopping another company—especially a startup with a focused vision and a malleable small team—from making something better than we could hope for?
I’m not holding my breath waiting for personalized AI to guide me toward my 2024 eating goals, but I certainly hope I can play Doom on these frames when they’re scheduled to land in a month.
For me, it was the gamification of technology that ultimately sparked my interest. If I wear a pair of smart glasses all day, I want them to encourage me to do mundane things in a fun new way, even if that just means spinning a Poke Stop on my walk around the neighborhood.