Matt Hoerl is a designer building things that feel inevitable once they exist. He founded Beautiful Things in 2024, a studio crafting AI native spatial experiences for the Apple Vision Pro. His visionOS apps have been globally featured by Apple Editors and selected as “Best in Education” and “Best in Design.” In this conversation we look at:

• His impressions about WWDC and what it unlocks for developers and users

• We went to the moon to experience Beautiful things

• Several ways in which the team has implemented AI in their apps

• The second biggest wish Matt wants from Apple

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Yuqian Sun is a Chinese AI narrative researcher based in London and currently a doctoral student at the Royal College of Art.

Leveraging her expertise in interactive media, she creates narrative experiences that feel alive and extend beyond video games and into our daily lives through conversational AI agents. She explores this topic through chatbots, games and interactive installations, which expand the boundary of fiction through human or non-human language interactions. 

In this conversation, we look at:

• The driving principles she follows when building believable AI Agents

• Language and cultural barriers in the context of AI and Humans

• Her strong stance on AI-generated content

• A precious advice she gives to all creators out there who simply “hate AI”

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Christoph is an XR veteran, he worked as an XR developer at Axel Springer, and is now one of the minds behind Laser Limbo, a successful mixed reality game on Quest that turned into a full AR arcade in Berlin. Over the past years he has worked on several projects and full games that merge physical and digital and push the boundaries of what the current generation of headsets is capable of.His recent research has been focused on the camera API leading to some of the craziest AND most polished prototypes I have seen, giving us a glimpse of the future of human computer interaction. Today we will dive into the Camera API and understand:- What is currently the biggest limitation- What are some creative uses you might not have thought about- How he implemented ball tracking in the working prototype, I personally tested- An important question you should ask yourself before even starting
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Naureen Mahmood is the CEO & co-founder of Meshcapade, an award-winning tech startup based in the heart Europe’s largest AI ecosystem, Cyber Valley.

At Meshcapade she is applying her work on human understanding for training AI avatars to see, understand and interact just like humans. This goes way beyond animating game characters. Meshcapade is developing the world's first and only 3D human behavior engine to power human-like interactions and behaviors for AI characters, virtual beings and humanoid robots.

We look at the very research foundation built by Meshcapade

• The SMPL model, that is now the de facto standard for computer vision

• How Meshcapade fits within the workflows of animators

• The broad range of use cases that go beyond gaming

• And all this effort is the foundation for how we will be able to interact with avatars, characters or virtual agents

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Orlando Mathias is a truly hands-on designer traversing the full breadth of product innovation from Strategy through to the nitty gritty of design & prototyping. He has led product innovation projects with Meta, Samsung 's Design Studio, and worked alongside Google's team on their gestural technology. He has now funded THE BLEND a design firm championing a physical first approach helping organisations anticipate and design our blended future. In this conversation, we will discover:

• What is his ideation and design process

• His experience with Snap Spectacles

• What are the lessons he learned from working with those who understand the physical space much better than digital designers

• How to avoid the biggest mistake you can make when designing spatial interactions and interfaces

• What he learned from leading teams during high-stakes design projects 

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Lisa Maria Egger, Co-founder & COO at Arrival.Space, an award-winning immersive web-based platform developed by Stratum1 that empowers people to create, connect, share, and explore next-generation content wherever you want on VR headset, mobile or the browser. In this conversation, we will look at:

• The key feature that turns Gaussian Splatting into the next level web content

• How these spaces can be experienced on web, mobile, and in VR

• A storytelling feature  I have never seen in any other platform

• The core reasons why this must be built on the open web

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Xiaobi (Iris) Pan is a globally recognised pioneer in the field of Emerging Technology Design. She is the mind behind interactive installations that blend digital and physical, visited by millions of participants.

Currently, Iris is a Lead Designer at Amazon. There, she is dedicated to using technologies such as Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence to revolutionise the consumer experience for both business and social good. (snippet 1)

We covered a lot during this conversation. We start discussing:

• How these technologies drive business impact

• The one question that helped her bring her ideas to another level

• A design model she follows to combine gamification, interaction and value for brands

• We end up discussing the future of human-computer interaction

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Lovis Odin is a French interactive designer specialising in 3D, XR and motion. With the advent of AI he started digging into tools and workflows to accelerate and augment the work of creatives, and today he will share with us how comfy UI has become one of the primary weapons in his toolset. ComdyUI can feel quite intimidating but I ended the conversation knowing so much more and ready to dive in. We will talk about:

• How to get started with ComfyUI

• What are the hardware requirements for various applications and alternatives if your rig is not up to the task

• His professional experience when working with brands

• Additional resources and platforms to help AI artists in their professional journey

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Olli Huttunen is an entrepreneur, video editor, 3D specialist, software developer and a real authority when it comes to Gaussian Splatting. I got to know Olli thanks to his Youtube channel, a priceless resource for anybody who wants to dive into this new 3D paradigm and today we take a deep dive into the world of Gaussian splatting:

• Olli explains why PostShot is his favorite tool and how to make the most out of it

• He shares best practices to minimize file sizes

• He tells us about a Blender add-on he has developed to create virtual camera arrays and why turning a mesh into a splat is not as dumb as it sounds

• And how the capabilities of the same camera array tool can be pushed even further to create synthetic 4DGS

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Marcus Ernst is Project Manager at MACK One, one of the drivers behind the AUREA Award community and a member of the MACK Research Team.

He has been instrumental in creating attractions that have been the first immersive experience for hundreds of thousands of visitors in Europa Park the second largest theme park in Europe!

In this conversation, we take a deep dive into: 

• The successes and failures along this journey

• What is the most important KPI when operating at this scale

• How scaling down was actually the key to success

• Why AR hasn't been more widely adopted in theme parks yet

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