Marco della Cava

USA TODAY

MILL VALLEY, Calif. — Ivy Ross is brewing tea and waxing lyrical about trees.

"When I rebuilt this house, I just knew it would be around that," she says, pointing to an outdoor deck that wraps carefully around an enormous tree trunk. "In past cities I'd say, 'This is my house,' and here I say, 'This is my home.' It's interesting to be conscious of the words you use."

Speaking of homes, do we have the right one? Surely this can't be the domicile of the new head of Glass, the innovative and controversial wearable computer from Google, whose annual developers conference starts Wednesday in nearby San Francisco. The Glass job would seem to be tailored for yet another young male engineer soliloquizing about bits and bytes.

But Google, indeed, just weeks ago selected a 58-year-old woman with a background as an artist and marketer to lead Glass' critical transition from its beta Explorer program to commercial launch, which the company says has no timetable other than when it's ready.

"I know they'd been talking to people more like them, more engineering-oriented," says Ross in an exclusive conversation with USA TODAY. "But they connected the dots. (At companies such as Mattel, Coach and the Gap), I designed products, came up with marketing campaigns and solved consumer needs with innovation. And somewhere in there I also designed eyeglass frames for seven years. My whole career prepared me for this job."

Until now, Glass had been led by Astro Teller, Google's so-dubbed captain of moonshot projects at Google X, which also birthed the self-driving car. The first Glass prototype, built in 2011, weighed 8 pounds. Today, the $1,500 hands-free phone and Web device, which is not yet broadly available, is being integrated into frames made by brands such as Diane von Furstenberg and Oakley.

Teller says when he sat down with Google co-founder Sergey Brin and other Glass executives, the list of attributes that would be required of the job's winning candidate "was so long that I went out and bought a stuffed unicorn for the office." When Ross got the gig, Teller gave her the unicorn.

"Retail isn't one of our strong suits, and someone like Ivy can, more than a technologist, really help us understand how people experience eyewear, because in the end this is just smart eyewear," says Teller. "Besides ticking all the boxes, she's a warm person who brings out the best in people. And she's got patience, which everyone will need throughout this evolution."

Glass has had a bit of a rough start, with a cultural reputation as a capable tech toy that grants wearers the wrong kind of attention. And privacy concerns continue to nag, given the small device's ability to take photos and videos.

To navigate such cultural issues, "Google needs a storyteller to put it all together for consumers," says J.P. Gownder, wearable computer analyst at Forrester Research, noting that in the company's most recent survey about Glass, 50% of respondents said their primary concern was privacy.

"Part of this is that simply engineering a cultural change can take time, just like it took us a while to be OK with Google Maps cars driving by," he says. "The other part is ensuring (that Glass has a) striking visual design as well as a cachet. Ross will need to explain how using it links into our lives."

During an hour-long conversation, Ross is thoughtful and open about the challenges ahead. She isn't sure yet where Glass is headed but is eager to begin working with her large team in Mountain View (she has rented an apartment near Google to avoid a daily traffic-filled drive from Marin County).

What is clear from a few stories Ross tells is that she has a passion for creating objects of beauty. That could be because at an early age she was one: her baby pictures weren't the typical babe-in-blanket poses, but rather "me curled up butt naked on the hood of a 1956 Studebaker Hawk."

Her designer father worked in the offices of Raymond Loewy, the firm behind the Hawk, "and my mom just said he wanted a picture of his two best works, together," she says with a laugh.

Ross credits her father's profession with leading her into metalsmithing. ("I was 5 years old at auto shows, staring at hub caps.") She had talent, and her more innovative jewelry pieces — namely the ones that blended titanium and niobium to great visual effect — wound up in collections at the Smithsonian and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

As a popular creator of fashion accessories, she often took whimsical liberties. After stumbling across "$8 Italian Brillo pads in a store in New York," Ross instinctively thrust her hand through them "and all of a sudden they looked like spun-gold bracelets."

A few days later, Ross was shaking her head and smiling at Studio 54, "watching girls with expensive dresses walk down the catwalk with Brillo pads on their arms."

The lesson? Knowing what people will gravitate toward is as much about instinct as it is about engineering.

"I love getting into the psyche of the consumer and understanding how to solve whatever problem they have with an object," she says.

"New technology always gets different reactions. But our screens are getting smaller and moving out of our pockets. I can see it; I can feel it. The really important thing is how we navigate getting to that place."