At I/O, Google Reveals Plan For Faster Glassware Approvals

In a session late Thursday at Google’s I/O developer conference, the company revealed a number of improvements to their internal process for approving and distributing glassware – improvements which will translate directly into more and better apps for Glass users.

Most Glassware developers will tell you that Google’s approval process is lengthy and slow. Typically, a developer submits an app, waits several weeks for feedback from Google, makes changes to the app based on that feedback, then resubmits. This process repeats as many times as necessary until Google’s approval team feels that the app is ready for release, and only then does it appear in the official MyGlass directory.

Currently, the whole process usually takes a number of months. This ensures that all Glassware is of the highest quality, but unfortunately, it also means that new apps take a long time to make it out to Glass users.

Google aims to shorten this cycle in several ways:

Glassware Flow Designer

First, they’re releasing a “Glassware Flow Designer” in the coming weeks which devs can use to submit an outline of their app to Google. The tool will support mockups of each screen, along with how the screens will work together to form the app’s experience, and will allow the approval team to give high-level feedback before an app is even built. By having an expert review at such an early stage of the app’s creation, a developer can avoid heading in a wrong direction with an app’s design, and have it ready for approval sooner.

Faster Feedback

Second, once an app has been submitted, Google intends to give earlier feedback to the developer. Instead of holding feedback until an app has been through the entire review process, the approval team will be directing each issue that arises back to the developer as it comes up. This will allow the dev to begin addressing issues sooner, and have their app ready to resubmit sooner.

Bigger Review Team

Third, Google is simply enlarging the approval team, allowing them to review more apps. This part of the process has already begun; according to figures given in the session, more apps have been approved in the past month than in the previous five, and the Glassware directory has seen 80 percent growth in that six-month period.

More Glassware makes Glass a more useful device for Explorers, and a comprehensive app catalog will also be a boon when Glass eventually reaches its full public release. With these changes, Google is helping to ensure that the MyGlass directory contains as many high-quality apps as possible.