The first Phoenix Eye units are out of the lab and on real routes with blind and low-vision testers.

A prototype that works in a lab is not a product. Over the coming months Phoenix Eye is being worn on ordinary days — commutes, supermarkets, station concourses, unfamiliar buildings — by testers who will tell us plainly what fails. We are watching three things: whether warnings arrive early enough to be acted on, whether descriptions stay short enough to be useful, and whether the glasses know when to say nothing. Every round of feedback goes into the next build. Field testing is also how we find the cases nobody designs for: rain on the lens, a departure board mounted too high, scaffolding that appeared overnight.