A Look At Lucyd’s Smart Eyewear And Accessibility

Nearly three years ago, back in October 2022, I wrote a piece for my old Forbes column in which I examined Meta’s Ray-Ban Stories and Amazon’s Echo Frames after companies sent me their respective sunglasses to try out and review. To distill my conclusion from using both: While I found both pairs to be intriguing from an accessibility perspective, they weren’t essential because I more or less treated the fancy-pants glasses like the cheap drugstore dumb sunglasses I’ve used for eons.

I was recently reminded of this old story of mine, and of its sentiments, when I was approached by Lucyd Eyewear about trying out the company’s so-called “audio eyewear” for accessibility’s sake. At 30,000 feet, Lucyd’s conceit is conceptually identical to that of Amazon and Meta’s: glasses (with speakers in the frames) that let you do things like listen to audio content and more. Lucyd asked which pair I’d like to have, and being someone who leans towards casual and sporty fashion, I chose the $199 Reebok Voltage sunglasses. I’ve been using them for the last several weeks.

The glasses, from which I’ve listened to music and podcasts as well as taken a phone call or two, connect to one’s phone via Bluetooth and, like Apple Watch and Vision Pro on iOS, has a companion app. The setup process was straightforward and painless; unlike something like AirPods, for instance, the Lucyd glasses need to be turned on in order to automatically pair after the initial setup. In my testing, I’ve tended to turn the glasses off so as to preserve its battery—only to later be flummoxed for a few seconds when I go to use the audio features because they aren’t working. What I’m saying is, part of the magic of something like AirPods is there is no power button, not even on the charging case. The earbuds just know when to “spring to life.” In that way, AirPods are far more accessible than Meta Ray-Bans or Echo Frames or, yes, Lucyd, because there’s less cognitive load to remember that“Oh yeah, you gotta turn them on” in order to use the Lucyd glasses’ marquee features. Otherwise, they’re just… dumb glasses.

I compare the Lucyd glasses to AirPods to illustrate that the glasses mostly replicate AirPods’ core functionality in a different form factor. Instead of being in your ears, they’re on your face. That’s not a complaint. In fact, from an accessibility perspective, there’s a cogent argument to be made that Lucyd’s glasses have appeal to someone who, for example, may have sensory conditions such that they don’t like—or can’t tolerate—objects in their ears. Maybe getting earbuds in and out of one’s ears are too fiddly from a fine-motor standpoint. Maybe they’re, like me, too often forgetting their AirPods at home when they leave the house to run errands or whatever. For those people, then, the Lucyd glasses could be perfect. It’d be a win-win situation: they can keep the sun out of their eyes whilst still being able to enjoy audio, take phone calls, and even query ChatGPT. For my usage, it’s been a struggle to remember to turn the glasses on for the audio features, so they’ve more often than not acted like my aforementioned inexpensive sunglasses I mainly wear to keep the sun out of my eyes.

Again, not a complaint. It’s just the nature of my beast.

In complementing this mini review, I was offered the opportunity to interview Lucyd’s CEO in Harrison Gross. Gross, who also serves as the company’s lead developer, explained via email he’s been working on smart glasses for 8 years and has filed 70 patents to show for it. Gross said he’s long been “addicted to screens,” with his vision and attention span suffering because of it. He described his personal mission as “[helping] people live more in the moment with wearables and reduce the need for screen time for people to get the information and digital functionality they need.”

“The emergence of smart eyewear [as a category] and voice-based AI computing is the answer to this problem,” Gross told me of the raison d'être for Lucyd. “I am doing what I can to address the problem of excessive screen time in our society to help people get to a ‘new normal,’ where they have seamless access to computational power in a mobile-friendly, hands-free, and heads-up format. That’s where Lucyd comes in!”

Gross firmly believes consumers “100%” want connected eyewear—even if they aren’t explicitly saying so. The popularity of products like Apple Watch and AirPods are proof, with Gross telling me the reason wearable technology is so enamoring is largely due to “familiarity and convenience.” Consumers, he said, “are much more likely to adopt smarter versions of products they already use than entirely new modalities” and pointedly said that’s why things like Humane’s failed AI Pin haven’t secured a place in the market. “Consumers are resistant to learning entirely new behaviors,” Gross said.

Gross added the appeal of wearable technology is “quite simple” and expounded further by telling me “if you can add more functionality to a particular form factor, the product becomes more useful to the user.” Ultimately, appeal boils down to two things: convenience and utility. In Lucyd’s case, Gross said, “our product is like headphones and glasses in one, so it obviates the need for both traditional glasses and headphones [and replaces] both devices with one at a price that matches traditional eyewear.”

What of smart glasses then?

“The customer for smart glasses is really people who already wear eyeglasses or sunglasses frequently—or safety glasses, as we have seen huge success with our smart safety frame,” Gross said. “It’s much easier to get a regular glasses wearer to switch to smart glasses than someone who doesn’t wear glasses at all.”

When asked about smart glasses and accessibility, Gross said it’s a “really interesting topic” because he believes smart glasses have a sizable distinct advantage: glasses inherently already used “as a medical device to address a whole host of issues.” There exist a wide array of smart glasses that specialize in addressing certain disabilities, he said, and Gross expects the market to “further diversify” as time marches on. He pointed to Lucyd’s own Lyte glasses, which “offers numerous voice-based controls for accessing information and AI from your connected device [and allows] users with difficulty typing to engage more easily with many different digital systems,” as well as Meta’s ever-popular Ray-Bans—which given their partnership with Be My Eyes—enables “general guidance and object exposition for low vision users,” Gross said.

Feedback-wise, Lucyd has been well-received by customers, according to Gross. He explained to me “many of our customers convert” during live demos of the product, adding the device’s value proposition “becomes immediately obvious to them.” Moreover, Gross said many longtime customers, whom he described as “diehards,” give he and his team lots of varied feedback. These “power users,” as Gross called them, are invaluable because they “get the most out of their frames” and, crucially, give Lucyd inspiration for improvements. “We hear all the time how our technology is life-changing for so many people—especially those who love audio content but are unable to wear headphones due to safety or professional concerns,” Gross said.

As one of Lucyd’s newest users, I think they have a good product. I like the smart functions and the stylistic aspect, but to me, smarts glasses have yet to reach their zenith. Particularly for accessibility’s sake, as someone with extremely low vision—Social Security deems me “legally blind” for aid purposes—the ultimate appeal in smart glasses comes with a screen. As I wrote last year in reviewing Apple Vision Pro, the present-day headset form factor is obviously Apple capitulating to the limitations of modern technology’s capabilities. As someone deeply invested in the company’s ecosystem, my dream scenario would be to someday wear a pair of “Apple Vision Glasses” running visionOS. They could help in navigation, object and people detection, and much more. Apple may be working on it, but the current technology isn’t yet ready for the mainstream. Meta seems to think it’s ready, but I wonder about its accessibility.

So, Lucyd. Again, I like the glasses as sunglasses, smarts be damned; I’ve gotten compliments on how good I look wearing them. As someone who already is a heavy user of AirPods, the smarts of Lucyd’s glasses are somewhat stunted for me. They work as advertised, but I’m going on nearly a decade of AirPods life, and old habits undoubtedly die hard. Nevertheless, the experience I’ve had with Lucyd’s glasses has been enlightening not only to satiate my nerdy, journalistic curiosity, but also to get an early glimpse (no pun intended) of what a glasses-forward future could be like for me.

Gross and I are on the same wavelength in that last respect.

“I look forward to [a] future where all eyewear is smart and delivers heads-up functionality to everyone. [It will reduce] our reliance on those pesky screens,” he said.