THE SOLO TRAVELLER
Your world. Your way.
Tools and Tech
Nicky Zhu, Co-founder and AI Interaction Product Manager at camera-free smart glasses company Dymesty.
Paying attention
A Q&A with Nicky Zhu
Briefly …
Travel technology can make navigating, translating and remembering easier, but every interaction demands some of our attention. Wearable AI specialist Nicky Zhu explores how technology could become less intrusive while keeping solo travellers connected to the places and people around them.
Smart glasses are moving rapidly from technological curiosity towards everyday wearable technology. Some place information directly in the wearer’s field of vision, while others use audio and AI to translate conversations, answer questions and capture information without requiring a screen.
Nicky Zhu, Co-founder and AI Interaction Product Manager at camera-free smart glasses company Dymesty, works within this fast-developing field. Drawing on her solo travels, she shares why greater capability also brings questions about attention, privacy and consent, and why the next advance may be measured by how little attention technology asks us to surrender.
You describe the best travel technology as something that lets us access information without repeatedly leaving the place we are actually in. When did you first become conscious of how much attention a phone can consume while travelling?
Tokyo was where it really became obvious to me. I began noticing how often I was stepping out of the experience without physically going anywhere. I would be moving through a station or walking through an unfamiliar neighbourhood, checking the map, putting my phone away, then taking it out again for a transit detail, then translation, then a search, then back to the map. I was constantly interrupting myself.
“I began noticing how often I was stepping out of the experience without physically going anywhere.”
When you’re travelling independently, you notice this more because there isn’t another person carrying the thread of the environment while you look down. In a busy station, your attention is suddenly divided between the screen and everything else: people moving around you, announcements, signs, traffic, where you’re walking and what the place feels like.
My phone was indispensable in Tokyo, so I didn’t come away thinking phones were the problem. I came away thinking that useful information has an attention cost. That stayed with me when I returned to my work in wearable AI. I became much more interested in technology that can give you what you need without asking you to temporarily leave the place you’re standing in. The best travel technology doesn’t just help you use technology more efficiently, it lets you stop using it sooner.
Translation is one area where you see wearable technology changing the experience. What does moving translation away from a screen allow a traveller to retain, particularly during conversations or while navigating an unfamiliar place?
The word I use is ‘continuity’. Think about what normally happens when you translate something on a phone during a conversation. Someone speaks, you look down, the technology does its work, you read or listen to the result, and then you look back up. It may only take a few seconds, but the rhythm of the conversation has changed. Eye contact disappears. You can miss an expression, a gesture or the little cues that tell you whether somebody is joking, hesitant or trying to explain something more carefully.
Moving translation into open-ear wearable audio can preserve more of that human layer. You’re still looking at the person rather than looking at the technology between you. The same principle becomes even more important when you’re moving through an unfamiliar place. You may need language help at exactly the same moment you need to hear a station announcement, notice a bicycle approaching or work out which way a crowd is moving.
But I don’t think ‘hands-free’ automatically means ‘attention-free’. A wearable that constantly talks, interrupts or gives you too much information can be just as distracting as a screen. Good wearable translation should be almost restrained: give me the information I need, at the moment I need it, and then get out of the way. I want to remember the person I spoke to, not the interface I used to understand them.
“Good wearable translation should be almost restrained: give me the information I need, at the moment I need it, and then get out of the way.”
Wearable technology can make interactions with AI feel increasingly seamless, but it can also raise questions around privacy, permissions and consent. What should travellers understand about how these devices handle those issues, particularly when using features such as translation in different countries?
I think one of the mistakes people make is treating wearable privacy as a single question: “Does this device have a camera?”. A camera-free device removes one very visible source of concern, but it doesn’t answer every privacy question. A wearable may still use microphones, speech may be processed locally or in the cloud, and some services may retain information while others may process it only temporarily. So before travelling with any AI wearable, I think people should understand four things: what the device senses, where that information is processed, what is stored and how they can delete or control it.
I would also make a very clear distinction between translation and recording. Using speech for a live translation and creating a permanent, searchable record of somebody’s conversation are not the same thing, even if microphones are involved in both. The legal rules, venue policies and social expectations around recording can change from one place to another. My own rule is deliberately simpler: if I’m going to record or retain another person’s words, I tell them and ask first.
Even where something may technically be permitted, I think travellers should still ask whether the person in front of them would reasonably expect it. That becomes more important, not less, as devices disappear into ordinary-looking eyewear. The more invisible the technology becomes, the more visible its consent should become. At Dymesty, our choice to build without a camera reduces one category of privacy and social friction. I would never say it removes the traveller’s responsibility to think about privacy altogether.
“The more invisible the technology becomes, the more visible its consent should become.”
Travel technology often promises more information, more functions and greater convenience. Do you think we have reached a point where the better measure of a travel tool is how little attention it demands from us?
Yes, although I wouldn’t say the goal is simply ‘less attention’. Sometimes five seconds of attention can save you twenty minutes of confusion. What I care about is how much attention a tool asks for in return for something genuinely useful. Technology companies tend to measure things like speed, accuracy, features and engagement. Travellers experience something slightly different.
We experience how many times we have to stop walking, unlock something, change apps, find the right screen, make another decision and then work out where we were again. Each interruption is tiny. Over an entire day, they add up. That is why I’ve started thinking about an ‘attention cost’ for travel technology. If two tools solve the same problem, I increasingly prefer the one that requires fewer visual checks, fewer interface decisions and less effort to return my attention to the world around me.
There is also an interesting contradiction here. For years, consumer technology has treated more engagement as evidence that a product is succeeding. Travel may be one of the places where the opposite is true. If a tool gives me exactly what I need and I don’t touch it again for the next hour, that may be a very successful interaction. The best travel technology should make me more present in a destination, not merely more informed about it.
Dymesty Cook Edge AI smart glasses with meeting recorder and real-time translation. Titanium frame, camera-free, and prescription-ready. Images courtesy of Dymesty.
Looking beyond translation, where do you see wearable AI becoming genuinely useful for travellers over the next few years, and what would need to happen before you would consider it indispensable rather than simply interesting?
I think the most useful applications will probably be much less dramatic than the futuristic demonstrations we usually see. Travel is full of small moments where information arrives at the wrong time or disappears before you can do anything with it. Someone recommends a restaurant while you’re walking. A guide mentions a name you want to remember later. Your platform changes. You alter your plans halfway through the day. You hear something important and, with permission, want to keep it without stopping to type a note.
Wearable AI could become very good at helping with those little pieces of context and memory without turning each one into another session on a screen. I also think it could reduce some of the mental load of solo travel. When you’re travelling solo, you are the navigator, translator, planner, note-taker and problem-solver all at the same time. A useful wearable shouldn’t take those decisions away from you, but it could make some of the mechanical work around them quieter.
What separates something indispensable from something merely interesting won’t be AI intelligence alone. It will also be reliability, latency, battery life, comfort, privacy, social acceptability and how gracefully the device behaves when connectivity isn't perfect. A brilliant assistant that works unpredictably or makes the people around you uncomfortable will remain a novelty.
My threshold is surprisingly simple: I’ll consider wearable AI indispensable when I stop thinking about using it. I shouldn’t have to think, “Now I need AI”. I should be able to ask a question, save something important or receive a useful cue while remaining engaged with the journey. The most mature wearable AI may ultimately be the kind we notice least.
To learn more about Dymesty, visit their website, and you can also connect with Nicky on LinkedIn.