Seven months after revealing its wearable prototype project, supermarket chain says its app is ‘the beginning of the journey’

British supermarket chain Tesco has launched a shopping app for Google’s Glass eyewear, with the aim of providing a faster way for people to add items to their online baskets within the company’s mobile applications.

Tesco Groceries is a free download for the £1,000 smartglasses, which went on sale in the UK in June 2014 after a lengthy trial in the US.

The app is controlled by speaking commands, either searching Tesco’s product database – “OK Glass, find a product: cheese” – or scanning barcodes on items that the shopper has in front of them.

They can then browse nutritional information and add the items to their basket, although they will still need to use Tesco’s mobile app for checking out.

The company’s plans for the app were originally revealed in June 2014, when it was still in prototype form.

“We thought about how our colleagues might be able to use Glass to check stock hands-free, or how our customers might be able to add a product to their grocery delivery basket while making a cup of tea,” blogged Tesco’s Pablo Coberly at the time.

“Getting to that stage has been a journey into entirely new areas of user interaction: new gestures, user interface elements, and input mechanisms.”

Seven months later, the app is available for Glass owners to try in the UK. In a new blog post, Coberly encouraged them to provide feedback on the app and additional features they’d like to see added.

Coberly also praised Google for its work on Glass’ software development kit, to help developers and companies create apps for the smartglasses. “From a developers’ perspective, working with Glass has been a joy,” wrote Coberly.

“The Glass Development Kit (GDK) documentation is good and getting better. The community is helpful and proactive about sharing knowledge, especially on stackoverflow. The Glass team at Google does all they can to try to make sure the glassware delivers the best experience possible.” This is a challenge given how Glass is still being developed, so it can be somewhat of a moving target. The Glass software platform went through 6 updates in the time we worked with it, which shows how much Google is still investing in the platform. Given the steady flow of software updates, and the various articles that have been published alluding to updated Glass hardware, I can’t help but feel this is still the beginning of the journey for Glass and for Tesco.”

Google Glass remains a niche product: “useful, but overpriced and socially awkward” as the Guardian’s Samuel Gibbs put it in a review as the device went on sale in the UK. Google has not released any sales figures, but the smartglasses will only be owned by a tiny minority of Tesco’s customers.

Reaching a large number of shoppers immediately isn’t the supermarket chain’s aim, though: as Coberly’s blog posts make clear, the Glass app is a chance to experiment with a technology that may become popular over the next five to 10 years.

Google Glass will be joined by numerous rival devices over that period. Tech giant Intel recently invested $25m in Vuzix, another manufacturer of smartglasses, while Sony showed off its own “Smart EyeGlass” prototype at this month’s CES show in Las Vegas. Apple has been granted several patents in related technology, too.

• Google Glass v Apple Watch: Apple edges it over Google

