http://www.fastcodesign.com/3041174/48-crazy-ui-ideas-coming-from-the-500-million-stealth-startup-magic-leap#22

There’s an etiquette that needs to go with every new technology.  Google’s Glass Explorer experiment was an exercise in this.  Some might regard it as a failure, but I tend to look at it as another necessary step.  Without an established etiquette, a visual body language adopted by the users, a code of interaction that anyone *not* employing or familiar with Glass could understand, conflicts arose.  In some cases those misunderstandings were bordering on violent.  It’s a lesson to all developers of interactive wearables, and I don’t think many of them have taken it to heart just yet.

This is not the first time technology has required social norms evolve to suit.  As cellular phone entered the marketplace, then became smaller and smaller, users were called selfish and inconsiderate for answering their phones and speaking aloud in public spaces (to the point where some restaurants banned phones entirely).  When hands-free devices became commonplace, it got even worse because you simply could not tell if the person was listening to you or to a voice on the end of the line.  It got better over time, people using their bluetooth headsets learned to turn away, avoid eye contact, hold their conversations in their cars.  Other people learned to check to see if the person was on their device, helped by the flashing blue light on the side that drew your attention to even the subtlest earpiece on the market.

Within Magic Leap’s patent artistry (pictured at the top), we can see allowances for different styles of interactivity, many of which convey a clear body language to those looking in from the outside.  What remains to be seen is if they will do the experiment, if they will allow their product out into the wild so they can see how the human factor reacts, and what work they will need to do to smooth that transition into common usage.