Focals by North
Launched 2018
Focals are a pair of fashion forward smart glasses with a full colour retina projector.
As Senior Interaction Designer, my responsibilities were:
Design the system architecture and applications
Plan and execute research studies
Design the mobile companion app
North was acquired by Google Inc. in 2020.
A User Interface for The Eyes
Focals projects a laser on to a holographic lens that is reflected onto the retina to form an image in your field of view. A joystick embedded in a ring is used to interact with the interface. There were 6 applications at launch: Notifications, messages, calendar, weather, Alexa, and places.
Display with 10 degree field of view
Ring with 4 way directional joystick with centre select
Retina projector
It’s a really tiny display.
It was a challenge working in parallel to hardware development. Within 6 months the display had shrunk 3x down to 110 pixels by 110 pixels.
So many apps so little space.
Despite a smaller display, product requirements remained the same. Apps: Notifications, messages, calendar, weather, Alexa, and places.
Very limited input.
There were only 5 buttons: up, down, left, right, and enter. The iPad shuffle had more buttons. It was also a pain to wear.
All the constraints made it challenging to design a usable interface.
Users kept getting lost. Not only was it difficult to navigate an interface that was in your line of sight you had to do with a tiny joystick. There were simply too many features and menus. The button mapping was inconsistent. Left was back then right was forward, but what did enter do?
I needed to do user testing, but there was no way to use actual glasses.
Each pair are custom made to fit the user, so there was no practical way to test concepts on the glasses themselves. I designed a prototype setup that simulated the experience as close as possible.
Prototype was displayed on a TV with a first person video behind the UI to simulate using the glasses while walking.
User is positioned at a specific distance for the UI to appear at a similar distance.
An eye box that simulated the 10 degree field of view.
A ring is connected to an Arduino that mapped the input to the keyboard arrow and enter keys.
The system needed to be simplified.
Using the prototype setup, I tested several concepts measuring time on task, usability and user preference. The results helped illustrate the need for simplicity. Ultimately, I flattened the architecture for better flow, remapped the joystick to consistent tasks and removed superfluous features.
Focals Companion App
The app was used to onboarded users, connect the device, and let users set preferences. Let’s chat and I’d love to share more.
Visual designs by Katrina Densmore
