HUUG Focals Journal

March 2nd After a few months of anticipation following my Focals fitting at the Showroom, I was pretty excited to receive the glasses once they finally arrived.  My experience unboxing the glasses brought about mixed feelings. On the positive side, I was impressed with North's packaging and the simple design of the components inside. It wasn't the most extraordinary product design, but I was impressed with the quality for a first generation product. On the downside, I could not get the glasses' display to calibrate properly. After exhaustively trying the "Alignment" process through the mobile app, I finally caved and contacted Support when I could not get a crisp image from the display. I remembered the crispness of the display at the Showroom, and wondered if production units were actually just a lower quality than those used for demos. Eventually, I decided that my pair was an anomaly, since the display was quite blurry. Once I followed the steps that Sup...

Wednesday March 4th My presentation on Imagetext and composite art still lingers in my head. I wear the glasses for the first time. Image-Words that's the first little thought that lit my brain up. Where do these images come from? Information-images but only light. Do these images have tiny little pixels? I can never tell. I open the app, have a hard time connecting the little ring with the spectacle. The left eye sees but the right eye is empty. Is there something wrong with my glasses? Google tells me it's all good. I got to call my dad and show him my glasses. I toggle a little. The game seems interesting. It goes left then up. Great I leap over one log! I try it again for 6 times. Still only one log! I'm looking for directions. Can Alexa understand my accent? Very cool, the weather feature comes in handy. The app has little awards for progress. Great! I like the clicks. They are very cool, I feel rewarded somehow. Yes! Call my dad! My phone, whatsapp and I see a tin...

Opening the box all wrapped up in a package where one might expect a cake of sorts. The little box with a nice note inside leading us to a link was unexpected to say the least. I thought about the relationship between the glasses and the ring. The longer I think about it the stranger it seems. I wore glasses of all sorts, to correct my vision mostly and rings in my culture are tokens (and are mostly made out of gold). It all seemed plastic to the naked eye, plastic glasses and rings. The ring of power that bonds with glasses for my eyes. Two disconnected objects brought together by "design". It was an interesting experience to say the least. Objects that make you want to think about outer pieces of jewellery, maybe bangles that can somehow connect to me to the instrument that measures the moisture in my garden bed. The box itself that holds the spectacle and the ring must be connected to electricity. The experience was not-so-intuitive because I for one looked at my spect...

Thursday February 27th: My Focals arrived without an accessory kit so I had to borrow someone else's charger for a few hours. The case had three white LEDs inside - one for the glasses, one for the ring/loop and one for the case; that's neat and intuitive. Activation wasn't very intuitive - having a card or a foldout 'getting started' guide would be nice. Getting the image tuned was fidgety at first, but in the end it resolved well. Soon I had a crisp image in my right eye!  The laser creates the illusion of a little monitor hovering a few inches from my nose on the right. To perceive the image I 'look at it' in that point of space with both eyes. The 'placement' of that image is strange - not a natural place to read in my field of view; I would never hold my phone or a watch up in that position. I had expected the image to seem farther away and more centred. Nevertheless, I was impressed by the resolution and the different colours - it...