There are plenty of ways to keep our eyes moist, but if you’re wearing glasses already, this could be a better option.
With almost everyone using something with a screen these days, our eyes are bound to get more easily exhausted than ever before. Even if you’re not always looking at a computer or a phone, however, your work or living environment would put a strain on your eyes that results in them getting dry too often. Our bodies have their own natural way of creating moisture for the eyes, but these are no longer enough, thanks to present-day lifestyles. Unsurprisingly, there’s a market for accessories and medicine to help keep eyeballs moist, but this new idea tries to combine both artificial and natural means in eyewear that looks almost stylish without trying to be.
Designer: Xinyu Ye
It is a biological imperative that our eyes remain moist; otherwise, they start to get irritated and feel painful. Our body’s natural mechanism is to blink to lubricate the front of the eyes, but that isn’t enough anymore because of how we live these days. Whether it’s because we’ve been staring at screens all day long or there is air blowing directly in front of us, or there’s really just more heat than usual around us, our eyes need all the help they can get, even from external sources.
Humans have also developed ways to moisturize our eyes when necessary, mostly using eyedrops. There are, however, also accessories like glasses that try to prevent eyes from drying up too much. Finally, there is also the more expensive but more permanent solution of surgical treatment, but that’s almost always just a last resort if nothing else worked. Unsurprisingly, it also carries the biggest risk, too.
Top-down Glasses is an attempt at rethinking and redesigning one of those long-lasting but affordable solutions. Wet room glasses, as they are called, are like goggles that try to trap and slow down the evaporation of tears and moisture that lubricate our eyes. At the same time, they try to maintain moisture around the eyes by creating space that is both well-ventilated and moist. Unfortunately, typical wet room glasses rate quite low on the comfort scale, which is what this design is trying to solve with an almost simple fix.
The trick was apparently to have the glasses tilt minus 30 degrees downward when worn while working on a desk. At this angle, the water from the rear of the temples is able to flow naturally to the top and front of the frame to create that much-needed moist space around the eyes. At the same time, however, the glasses don’t simply rely on external means to keep the eye moist. It uses pulses to remind the wearer to blink their eyes more often, creating the natural lubrication that their eyes need.
Curiously, the Top-Down Glasses weren’t designed with fashion in mind, but they still ended up looking quite fashionable. In a way, this would encourage wearing these glasses more regularly since people won’t look awkward or out of place. The design also seems to work with prescription lenses, so the wearer won’t have to trade one comfort for another just to keep their eyes moist.
