Yes, the camera isn't socially acceptable. But glasses are. So they could've had a HUD that only responded to location- and audio-based cues - map with directions, walking tour, alerts that people would otherwise look down at their phone (or smartwatch) for, etc.

They could've made that work and avoided the stigma they ended up facing, until adding a camera was more reasonable.

Would that featureset have been that useful? Maybe not, but then was the Google Glass we got that useful? Didn't seem so.