👋

Andrew R McHugh
turns R&D ambiguity into meaningful products.

Strategy • Design • Engineering

Wist: Immersive Memories

Spatial capture, processing, & playback on iOS, Quest, Vision Pro

2021-2026 • Founder, CEO (Design, Eng, Product, R&D)

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Samsung Research America

Defining & prototyping the future of AR glasses across OS, apps, and interactions

2017-2021 • Team Lead & Senior Designer

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Older work

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Echo

Transparent consumer banking in an opaque market

PM, Prototyping Lead, UX Designer
• 2016

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Humane Virtuality

Researching the future of VR UX in week-long sprints

UX Designer
• 2016

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Moral Decisions & Haptics in VR

Does feeling a virtual world change your moral decisions?

UX & Research Methods Designer
• 2015

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What If…? Conference & Book

Gathering diverse crowds to explore the world, starting with questions

Cofounder & Chief Curiosity Curator
• 2010-2014

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Invent • Design • Build •
Lead Teams • Tell the Story

How I work

My special ability: integrating design+eng+product for 0→1, highly technical, R&D-led 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
Frameworks
    • 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
Design & Production
    • Unity
    • Blender
    • Figma
    • Sketch
    • Premiere Pro
    • DaVinci Resolve
    • Rive
    • Qualitative & Quantitative User Research
    • Procreate
    • Keynote
    • Reality Scan / Reality Capture
2009-2013

Undergrad with philosophy, humanities perspective on technology, math, and physics. And built a startup (What If…?), led a sustainability house, and built a campus bike share program.

2014

Continued to design and produce The What If…? Conference, helping 1,000s ask their own questions.

2015

Left What If…? to pursue spatial computing as an ethical designer. With a stint at an agency and as a freelancer.

2015-2016

Master's in HCI at Carnegie Mellon University and the M-ITI (Portugal). Worked on haptics in VR and designed a next-gen consumer banking app for a client. Coverage in WSJ.

2016

Published The Book Of What If…? Questions & Activities for Curious Minds.

2017-2021

Designed and built future AR/VR interfaces at Samsung. A sort of precursor to Galaxy XR.

2021-2026

Founded and built immersive memory startup, Wist. Design, eng, R&D, product, press, and everything to keep it going.

Now

Looking for next challenge as I dissolve Wist.

© Andrew R McHugh turns R&D ambiguity into meaningful products.