Context
Standard frame sizes fit almost nobody. Topology used the iPhone’s TrueDepth sensor, the Face ID hardware, to measure pupillary distance, bridge geometry and temple angle precisely enough to manufacture custom frames from a scan. They’d raised about $18M and the technology worked. The design problem was trust: getting someone to point a depth sensor at their face and accept its number over a professional’s.
Partway through, the company moved from selling to consumers to selling through eye care professionals. The main user went from a nervous consumer to a trained optician who wanted the raw numbers. I was the only designer, working directly with the CEO and CTO, 2020 to September 2021.
Contribution
The scan was the whole consumer product, and I decided to show the sensor working instead of hiding it. I worked with the engineers to find out what the depth pipeline could report in real time (lighting, face position, capture progress) and turned each one into a state the user could do something about, so a bad scan said what was wrong instead of just asking for another try. Busier screen during capture, more engineering time on feedback than on the result. I took that because interviews showed people blamed themselves for failed scans and quit.
For try-on I picked responsiveness over photorealism. A frame preview that updated the instant you scrolled beat a prettier one that landed a second late. The founders wanted the render quality. People compare frames by flicking through them, not by staring at one.
When the pivot came, I designed the iPad optician tool as a different product on shared components: measurement data next to the model, manual adjustment, a session record that attaches to the patient file. Consumer stuff (big targets, little text, celebratory moments) came out in favor of density and auditability. One component library across both was the right call. It also meant reworking the pieces that only made sense in one of the two contexts.
Outcome
The consumer app proved a depth scan could replace an in-store measurement for people who’d never had one. The optician tool shipped into practices as the company moved to professional channels. New Look Vision Group took an equity stake and rolled the platform out across its Canadian stores. Topology runs today as optical-industry SaaS on the same scanning and try-on stack.
