The industrial design is solid, and though it is being manufactured in small batches, it has the build quality you might expect from something being mass-produced.Not sure what to make of this statement. The design is beautiful, but I don't see why that would be an artifact of mass-production. The early prototypes for Glass were much sexier in terms of build integrity (optics, for example) than the current mass-produced models. One of the big challenges, in fact, was lowering expenses for mass-producibility. However, yes, the design is wonderfully intelligent. You'll notice some optical tricks when you look at Glass. For example, you'll see as if the frame takes up a portion of the sides, but in reality, there is circuitry hidden behind it--by looking at it you'd never know :)
The interface is not intuitive. It is actually very difficult to use the first time, for seemingly no reason. ... I would have expected more design attention to have been spent on interacting with the software.
I really feel this is a non-issue. Yes, you don't know how to use it when you first get it, but after a few instructions from a friend, I navigated the entire interface just fine for about an hour without needing additional help. Mostly, I just had to learn about the well-disguised touchpad. I've used a lot of silly software and hardware, and Glass is not one of them. It's a new product class, and it's going to have a new interface.
Glass doesn't communicate with you very much, and when it does, it doesn't use audio. It makes heavy use of the screen when possible. When navigating Glass, you can rarely speak selections. The only way to fully navigate the interface is to use the touchpad by holding your hand up near your face.
Navigation is definitely an issue. However, the Glass team planned on external devices being used to navigate Glass. Once Thalmic's MYO is fully operational, I don't think navigation will be much of a problem.
The battery life is dreadful. After ten minutes of use, the battery level reported went down by at least 8%. The owner told me that it would probably last about two hours with constant use. (This is hopefully a temporary handicap that will be improved in the future, but I find it hard to consider even this level of battery life good enough for a device that is sold.)
This is supposed to be fixed. Especially if you use video recording, the battery will drain really quickly. The idea by final product, is to have it last about 12 hours with passive use (kind of like a cell phone).