Andrew R McHugh
is a 0→1 founder, designer, & engineer who turns R&D ambiguity into meaningful products.
Wist: Immersive Memories
Spatial capture, processing, & playback on iOS, Quest, Vision Pro
2021-2026 • Founder, CEO (Design, Eng, Product, R&D)
Samsung Research America
Defining & prototyping the future of AR glasses across OS, apps, and interactions
2017-2021 • Team Lead & Senior Designer
Older work
Moral Decisions & Haptics in VR
Does feeling a virtual world change your moral decisions?
UX & Research Methods Designer
• 2015
What If…? Conference & Book
Gathering diverse crowds to explore the world, starting with questions
Cofounder & Chief Curiosity Curator
• 2010-2014
Invent • Design • Build •
Lead Teams • Tell the Story
My special ability is navigating early stage mess to find what is really important.
How I work
Map the possibility space. Find opportunities and constraints by asking questions. Which can we start answering and which can be answered later?
Get buy-in with *the thing*. Use unique insight to clarify framing, for stakeholders, the team, and users. Create the human story about why this is valuable. Comfortable with ambiguity as we figure this out.
Learn through prototyping. Fast prototypes answer questions in design, eng, and product. Flexible fidelity lets us explore at the right speed based on our most important unknowns.
Forest and trees. My background enables me to find weird insights. My toolbox is filled with physics, math, philosophy, HCI, perception, computer vision, machine learning, and more.
Founder energy. Driven. Zero to one. I can handle risk and uncertainty while finding the most valuable paths to pursue or to prune.
Democratizing the future. Focus on humans. Make complex systems feel so easy that anyone can use them, while keeping their power. Craft beautiful things.
Tools
Whatever can answer the biggest unknowns or can get us to the next phase.
Programming Languages-
- Swift
- Python
- JavaScript/TypeScript
- C#
- HLSL
- Metal Shading Language
- HTML/CSS
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- SwiftUI
- AVFoundation
- Metal
- ARKit
- RealityKit
- OpenCV
- Open3D
- PyTorch
- Streamlit
- Scikit Image
- Rerun
- Anaconda
- Git
- Mixpanel
- Firebase (Firestore, Storage, Auth, Cloud Functions, +)
- FFMPEG
- Loops
- Jekyll
- Node
- Mocha
- Arduino
- LLM/AI Assisted Workflows
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- Unity
- Blender
- Figma
- Sketch
- Premiere Pro
- DaVinci Resolve
- Rive
- Qualitative & Quantitative User Research
- Procreate
- Keynote
- Reality Scan / Reality Capture
Timeline
Founded and built immersive memory startup, Wist
Design, eng, R&D, product, press, fundraising, hiring, and everything else.
First Sight (Short Film)
Collaborated with director to use Wist on set, replacing some VFX work with the real thing.
Designed and built future AR/VR interfaces at Samsung
A precursor to Galaxy XR. Led team. Regularly presented to execs. Filed 10+ patents with 9 granted.
LGBTQ+ VR Museum
Optimized photogrammetry assets for the museum, increasing performance and visual quality.
From 2D to 3D product design: a kind-of personal adventure
Invited speaker at XD Immersive. Shared my lessons transitioning into spatial computing design.
View ↗Master's in HCI @ Carnegie Mellon
Dual degree at Carnegie Mellon University and the M-ITI (Portugal). Worked on haptics in VR and designed a next-gen consumer banking app for a Portuguese client. Coverage in WSJ.
VR UX Explorations (Humane Virtuality)
Collection of sprints, each exploring a different UX question in VR.
Freelancing + agency UX and front-end web development
Web apps and web sites.
The What If…? Conference
Helping 1,000s ask their own questions.
Pan's Labyrinth Eyes
Arduino project recreating the hand-eyes from Pan's Labyrinth.
Undergrad in philosophy, humanities perspective on technology, math, & physics
Double major, double minor. And built a startup (What If…?), led a sustainability house, and built a campus bike share program.
