The Ultimate Failure of Snapchat Spectacles.

Why hype can’t always translate into success.

Spectacles, created by Snapchat, are camera sunglasses or “smartglasses” meant to be used exclusively with the Snapchat app. Users could record short videos that would upload to their Snapchat accounts. The release of this product stirred up a lot of hype and interest, so what ultimately went wrong?

The spectacles were initially released in late 2016 and could only be purchased via “Snapbots” a vending machine that was dropped at random locations across the country. This created so much buzz that people waited for several hours in line to purchase the sunglasses. The exclusivity of the product was alluring — at first. Many users stopped using the Spectacles as the initial hype wore off pretty quickly. Meanwhile the Spectacles were still not available to the public for purchase. By the time they were widely released (5 months later) word had spread of the lack of use for the sunglasses and interest was widely lost. Snapchat failed to capture this short lived hype and overestimated the longevity of Spectacles. This makes you wonder, did Snapchat ever stop to think if users actually wanted a product like this?

There were several assumptions and oversights made by the social media platform. First off, people were extremely weary of being recorded without consent. Many users felt uncomfortable wearing the product out in public due to this stigma. Another inconvenience was that the Spectacles could only work with Snapchat, this limited the use for a relatively expensive product. Perhaps if the sunglasses could sync with user’s cameras people could justify the purchase of this extremely niche product.

The final nail in the coffin was the poor usability of this product. Problems were appearing left and right and created many frustrations. Instead of connecting via bluetooth, users had to pair the glasses via the app which was not a seamless process. Additionally, the quality of video was a continuing issue, often loading blurry content to user’s accounts. After spending $150 on sunglasses this is not the expected result. Finally, wearing the glasses caused many phone batteries to drain quickly. Although this was a V1 rollout there were too many problems and not enough solutions for users to justify continued use.

These oversights ultimately led to the crash of this once highly desired product leaving Snapchat with warehouses filled with the unwanted Spectacles and costing them immense losses. Perhaps we can all learn from this endeavor to remember how important it is to conduct thorough user research when unveiling new products to the market.