0→1 Design × Engineering × Strategy
I turn R&D ambiguity into meaningful products.
Andrew R McHugh — founder, designer, and engineer with a specialty in early stage products and spatial computing.
- 9patents
- WSJ, Vicefeatured
- ~$1Mraised
- >18Ksign-ups
- Millionsviews
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
My special ability
Navigating early-stage ambiguity to identify, design, and build what's 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
Tools shape our perspective. I use whatever helps answer questions and ship.
Programming Languages
SwiftPythonJavaScript/TypeScriptC#HLSLMetal Shading LanguageHTML/CSS
Frameworks
SwiftUIAVFoundationMetalARKitRealityKitOpenCVOpen3DPyTorchStreamlitScikit ImageMatplotlibRerunAnacondaGitMixpanelFirebase (Firestore, Storage, Auth, Cloud Functions, +)FFMPEGLoopsJekyllNodeMochaArduinoLLM/AI Assisted Workflows
Design & Production
UnityBlenderReality Composer ProFigmaSketchPremiere ProDaVinci ResolveRiveQualitative & Quantitative User ResearchProcreateKeynoteReality 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.
Volumetric Pregnancy
Scanned my wife every week of her pregnancy so we could see just how much bodies change. Timelapse in video, Looking Glass, and Quest.
LGBTQ+ VR Museum
Optimized photogrammetry assets for the museum, increasing performance and visual quality.
Designed and built future AR/VR interfaces @ Samsung
A precursor to Galaxy XR. Led team. Regularly presented to execs.
From 2D to 3D product design: a kind-of personal adventure
Invited speaker at XD Immersive. Shared my lessons transitioning into spatial computing design.
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.
VR UX Explorations (Humane Virtuality)
Collection of sprints exploring different UX challenges in VR.
Freelancing + agency UX and front-end web development
Web apps and web sites.
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.
