Google has started selling its Google Glass to anyone with the money ($1500) in the United States. Being available to the general public puts a lot of pressure on Google to make its product successful. Google has made some major HR changes at Google Glass division.
The lead electrical engineer has left his job at Google Glass to join the facecomputer Oculus, a leading competitor. And second big shift is to appoint the director of art.com Ivy Ross as head of Google Glass.
Prior to working at Google, Ross worked as head designer for Mattel, Disney, Swatch, Coach, Calvin Klein and Art.com, her last job. She was also the eyewear design lead at optical outfit Bausch and Lomb in the 90’s. Ross studied at Harvard and has a rich, non-tech background.
Recently Google has filed a patent for embedding tiny camera into contact lenses. So for Ross, her most recent experience with Google Glass is a job at contact lens manufacturer Bausch & Lomb in the early 90s where she was Vice President of design and development for Outlook Eyewear. Ross will be replacing Babak Parviz the old head of Google Glass and will be officially overseen by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Astro Teller.
One of the reasons to appoint Ivy Ross is to change the way people think of Google Glass. The company wants to make it more ‘normal’ as opposed to being it a geeky widget. She is already asking some interesting questions about the product’s potential like whether it can make us more sociable or not. It remains to be seen, however, if her background has prepared her to solve the more concerning problems of Google Glass use like privacy violation of people’s lives. Since she has an experience of working and leading several retail teams at many big-name brands, Ivy Ross is as qualified as any to head the Google Glass division.
