02

Building

It’s one thing to come up with a design and engineering concept that meets the stated goals. It’s another thing altogether to actually build it, especially during a global pandemic when neither company could collaborate in person and the hardware design and engineering teams were required to work remotely.

So as we considered how to incorporate 5MP cameras, the best audio drivers, microphones, and so on, we had to grapple with the undeniable truth that every single module that we used in the device presented a tradeoff of some kind for either its set of customer-friendly features, its industrial design, or its technical specifications.

That’s because, as when developing any piece of hardware, the inclusion of each individual component comes at the cost of something else, whether it’s space, battery use, heat dissipation or weight.

Developing an all-new device during a pandemic

One of the biggest obstacles was that we had to do hardware manufacturing support remotely. Our hardware team never went to China to inspect the factory process, which is unheard of. Yet we still had to persevere.

That’s where the engineering team’s ingenuity came into play. They came up with a process for using cameras that live streamed from the factory so that we could do remote troubleshooting. This included the creation of virtual camera rigs that the teams could use to inspect the products at a microscopic level, which allowed us to make decisions on our pass or fail criteria. “There were a lot of times where it was like, this shouldn’t have been able to happen, and yet, somehow it did,” says product manager Ankit Brahmbhatt. “And it was because of the team rallying together during a challenging time and being motivated by a singular objective.”

And that’s what made developing Ray-Ban Stories such an exciting challenge: dedicating ourselves to that singular focus of building the best-possible technology into Ray-Ban Stories no matter what obstacles we faced and ensuring the glasses were a fashion-first product that protected people’s privacy.

So how did we make it all fit?

Let’s take a look at some of the specific dynamics Meta’s engineers and EssilorLuxottica’s industrial designers had to work on in order to achieve our objective.

Privacy

We’ve baked privacy directly into the product design and functionality of Ray-Ban Stories to give both device owners and people around them peace of mind. This includes an LED that’s hardwired into the camera and indicates when photo and video capture is taking place, and a power switch that turns the glasses on and off; when it’s off, the microphone and cameras are both disabled, and recording isn’t possible. We also found during user testing that certain frame colors, such as beige, made it hard to see the LED, so we removed those colors from consideration.

Camera

The best camera we could fit into the desired form factor was 5MP. One of the biggest challenges was the viewing angle: bringing out the camera from the frame to allow for a slight angle but without hindering the industrial design and iconic look of the frames. Determining the proper viewing angle required a great deal of research, but if you look at Ray-Ban Stories, you can barely tell the cameras aren’t flush with the barrel.

Audio

We leveraged previous work Reality Labs has done on advanced audio, which made it possible to work with custom audio drivers, and that allowed us to expedite our efforts in this area.

Microphones

We wanted Ray-Ban Stories to be able to understand when you do things like initiate a call with a voice command. That required incorporating near-field microphones. We also needed to use far-field microphones for recording video or audio of someone that’s far away. In all, we utilized a three-array system with microphones on the front, side, and bottom.

Flexes

Building all of this technology into a pair of glasses required figuring out how to route numerous high-speed signals between components on opposite sides of the brow, as well as power. So we developed all-new methodologies for routing flexes, the circuit boards that connect components across the frames, and embedding them within the glasses’ plastics.

Hinges

Here, we encountered one of the device’s most complex mechanical features. Ray-Ban Stories’ hinges are moving parts that hold high-speed electronics and power, and they need to withstand more than 10,000 hinge cycles over the device’s lifespan. So the team developed a new patented method that uses a flexible PCB that’s opened up so it’s free to move.

Battery

With the battery taking up a significant amount of room, we were challenged with figuring out how to pack it in the arm of the glasses while keeping the thickness as small as possible. We also had to ensure the device wouldn’t overheat with a battery that supported hours of daily use. We were faced with another conundrum: engineering wanted a large battery and the industrial design team wanted a smaller one. We had to experiment with finding the right specs that met the needs of both constituents.

Charging case

Initially, we were going to launch Ray-Ban Stories with a simple charging cable, but feedback from our early user testing surveys made it clear that the cable was unsatisfactory because it often popped off. The solution was a charging case. The challenges involved incorporating pogo pins initially designed for a cable into an elegant case design, and ensuring the glasses wouldn’t bend or warp in the case inside a hot car. Plus, the case needed to deliver a 50 percent charge in 30 minutes.

Multiple SKUs

While the Wayfarer is probably the most iconic Ray-Ban model, we decided early on that Ray-Ban Stories wouldn’t be a typical device that comes in just one form factor. Our teams agreed that if we wanted to market a fashion-forward smart glasses product, people had to have options so that they could choose the style that best fit their personal preferences. That meant there needed to be multiple versions of Ray-Ban Stories.

Initially, we tried to architect in such a way that we had flexibility on different styles so that we didn’t have to re-engineer every aspect of the product for each style. But we also realized we had to make accommodations to account for the different sized frames of different styles, as well as how the different styles would fit into their charging cases.

In the end, we settled on four distinct styles and we needed to make only small adjustments for each of the different frames. In total, Ray-Ban Stories is available in 28 variations across classic Ray-Ban styles — including Wayfarer, Round, and Meteor — colors, and lens options.

Ray-Ban Stories | Wayfarer

A timeless frame lasting across endlessly shifting horizons.

Ray-Ban Stories | Round

Long worn by celebrated thinkers and dreamers.

Ray-Ban Stories | Meteor

Born in the 60s as an angular interpretation of a classic.

How Meta and EssilorLuxottica combined tech and style in our first smart glasses