Happy New Year! Ready for 2017!
over 9 years ago – Tue, Jan 03, 2017 at 11:27:48 PM

Happy New Year!

To all our backers from around the world, we wish you a very happy new year! We're off to a solid start in 2017 and wanted to share how things have been going post-campaign and over the holidays. As we mentioned previously, we got to work directly when the campaign ended. Here's an overview of what we have been working on, as well as exciting upcoming activities. 

Manufacturing

Jason and Tiantian flew to China to participate in design reviews with our manufacturing partners. Seen below, Jason and our partners are discussing our latest prototype. This phase is often referred to as Design for Manufacturing (DFM) and involves reviewing and tweaking product designs in order to ensure manufacturability. 

As these meetings continue and improvements come to fruition, we'll share photos with you. Expect some exciting images as we get further into the process!

Lenses

In addition to reviewing the design of the frames, we've been evaluating the various types of lenses that will ship in each pair of Vue. Tiantian even had her own prescription lenses manufactured and installed in her pair of Vue so that she can test out the full experience each day. 

Just this past week, we received and inspected sample lenses. We also toured a lens surfacing line to better understand how the lenses are made. Check out some of the cool videos below to see how what it looks like when your lenses are being made!

Events

Whenever we travel to China, we work out of a co-working space through the HAX accelerator program. It's a busy place, and whenever we arrive there seems to be something exciting going on. Most recently, HAX held a Demo Day where alumni companies (including us) had the opportunity to present their product to a crowd of Asia-based investors. Tiantian gave a brief pitch and demo to the crowd pictured below.

CES

We'll be at CES 2017 in Las Vegas! We'd love to meet some of our Kickstarter backers face-to-face. We will be part of the HAX booth on January 7th at Eureka Park 51639. Swing by to chat with us and see the prototypes. Feel free to shoot us an email if you are there and looking to connect! If you're around, keep an eye out for the flyers below, which we've designed for CES.

Hiring

The Vue team is growing! We're looking for experienced and enthusiastic people who are excited about smart glasses and new wearable technology. Check out the opportunities below and shoot us any recommendations you have to [email protected].

• Production Lead
• Software Engineer (iOS)
• Software Engineer (Android)
• Electrical Engineer
• Firmware Engineer

Kickstarter Survey

We're hard at work preparing your survey. Because we are collecting sensitive prescription information, we have to abide by regulatory standards that most projects do not have to deal with. More specifically, some organizations that collect Protected Health Information (PHI) must adhere to standards defined in the HIPAA Privacy Rule (a US regulation). Unfortunately, the rules are dense, so we've had to consult with lawyers to make sure we are compliant. Moreover, not every software vendor is able to collect this data, meaning we've had to abandon, evaluate, and test out other tools before building the survey. 

We also have quite a few customization options, which makes each order complex. Although the survey may look straightforward as you move through it, on the backend we need to make sure that all the data is clear and organized so that we can export it in a workable format for our manufacturing partners. 

Because of these extra requirements that we must deal with, the survey requires a lot of work and time—but we're almost there! The challenges will not affect project timelines, but they are tedious! We're putting the final touches on the survey and will have it ready soon. We are targeting early January for release. We will post an update here and email backers directly once it is ready, so keep an eye out for that!

2017

Throughout this journey, we'll aim to post a minimum of one update a month on Kickstarter so you can keep track of our progress. Moving forward, updates will get progressively more technical and manufacturing-focused, especially as we start to evaluate units with our manufacturing partners. We're excited to share the process with you!

As always, don't hesitate to reach out to us with any questions.

With love,

the Vue team

FUNDED! We did it! Thank you!
almost 10 years ago – Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 11:15:19 PM

THANK YOU

A sincere thank you to all of you who made this happen. We wanted to let you know that we are humbled and in awe of this support. To know that so many of you pledged to make this product a reality is inspiring. It's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work on shipping Vue!

Tiantian and Jason are flying back to our office in China tomorrow morning to continue work on preparing Vue for manufacturing. There are design improvements to make as well as some exciting design for manufacturing activities in the near future as we begin to work with contract manufacturers to ramp up for production. Expect regular updates from the team to highlight progress, technical information, and any challenges along the way.

Again, we extend our gratitude to all of our backers for believing in this project. We're excited to get to work!

With love,

the Vue team

You're awesome—$1.2M and rising!
almost 10 years ago – Fri, Dec 09, 2016 at 10:33:05 AM

Hey backers! As always, thank you for your support. We've just hit our latest stretch goal of $1.2M. That means we've unlocked the Kickstarter exclusive temple piece as well as optional nose pads. 

Kickstarter Exclusive Design

The design with the most votes was the Green Marble temple piece. This will now be another option exclusively for Kickstarter backers to choose from among the existing colors already listed on the main campaign page. See the image below!

In addition to the temple piece, we're evaluating nose pads. This will be an optional accessory that backers can add to their order in the post-campaign survey, at no additional cost. 

Events

We've still been making sure to get out in the local community to demonstrate the Vue prototypes. Check out some of our photos from two recent events: Wearable World and the HAX hardware meetup in San Francisco!

10 days left!

Time flies! We are so thankful for the support and are excited to see where the campaign goes from here. 

with love, 

the Vue team

Thank you & stretch goals!
almost 10 years ago – Thu, Dec 08, 2016 at 06:43:16 PM

Wow!

What an amazing first few days. Our deepest thanks to all of you for carrying us past our $50,000 goal in a matter of hours on Day 1! We have since passed the $100,000 mark and are rising even higher.

Here's the team celebrating the moment we hit our goal!

Stretch Goals

We're happy to announce our first stretch goals. First, we'll be including a microfiber lens cloth with each order upon reaching $200,000. We've also been hearing from a lot of you that you'd like to see anti-glare and scratch resistant coatings on your lenses. Our second stretch goal of $500,000 will ensure that all our lenses will come with anti-glare and anti-scratch coatings! See the image below, which we will be adding to our main campaign page.

Help us hit these stretch goals by telling your friends about the campaign!

 

 

 

 

Again, thanks and gratitude to everyone who has backed the campaign so far. Stay tuned for the next update!

With love,

the Vue team

$500k—second stretch goal unlocked!
almost 10 years ago – Thu, Dec 08, 2016 at 03:26:17 AM

You did it again!

Thanks to everyone’s support, we’ve flown by our second stretch goal. This is a great threshold you've helped us cross, as it means that all lenses will come with complimentary anti-glare and anti-scratch coatings! 

New Stretch Goals

There have been a lot of great suggestions about potential stretch goals. We’re taking these suggestions into account and will be announcing the new stretch goal in the coming week. Stay tuned!  

Press Roundup  

We had an awesome piece come out from Mike Elgan of ComputerWorld, who met us to try on Vue personally. Check that out here:

 

New York City Hardware Meetup  

This is a little last second, but Aaron will be attending a hardware meetup in NYC tonight! If you are around and can make it, swing by to hear Aaron give a brief talk about Vue! Details are here. 

With love, 

the Vue team