Elle, the iconic lifestyle magazine from Hearst, was the first fashion brand to develop an application for Google Glass. Elle partnered with GoogleX and Perpetual to build the first Google Glass Magazine application to engage users using emerging technologies.
Our partnership with Elle was a result of Hearst’s ongoing research and innovation efforts and our corporate innovation offerings. The goal of the project was to help Elle and GoogleX come up with the most effective experience on this new frontier device.
The teams worked together to determine the best content and deliverables, as the content consumption experience on Google Glass is vastly different from that of a magazine or website. Timeliness and context were critical. The teams collaborated to deliver a Google Glass application that would enable users to do the following:
Subscribe to their favorite content
Experience content in formats suited to the Google Glass experience
Discover and shop directly from Google Glass
Elle for Google Glass allows users to subscribe to timely and contextual content. Subscriptions include read-aloud excerpts from Elle Dispatch, a fashion and culture news blog, and posts from the Street Chic blog, updated daily with other multimedia content to elevate engagement with other popular sections of the magazine.
A "Save for Later" feature was implemented on readers' timelines to let them save their favorite items on a wishlist. These favorited items would then be displayed on an Elle for Google Glass dashboard, a companion responsive mobile app we developed, allowing users to go deeper into content discovered on Google Glass.
We pushed the boundaries to allow users to shop directly from their Google Glass device. Once a reader favorites an item on the application, they can purchase it with one tap on their device via a service called ShopStyle.
Elle for Google Glass users is fashion-forward young professionals living a fast-paced lifestyle with interests in fashion and culture. We built audible summaries to have daily fashion updates read aloud to them during their coffee run, commute, or on the go.
The application was one of the first Google Glass applications launched along with CNN, Twitter, and Gmail at Google's annual I/O conference. It was among the top 10 most accessed applications on Google Glass.
