Ross Finman (Niantic) on Pokemon GO as Outlier or Indicator & Foundation for Bigger Success to Come

12/17/19 • 49 min

Ross Finman is the AR Strategy Lead at Niantic, the company behind Pokemon GO and Harry Potter Wizards Unite.

You may have noticed the press over the last few months that Niantic is making a heavy push to support and expand the AR ecosystem through the development of their Real World Platform (planet-scale, augmented reality platform for current and future generations of AR hardware), as well as the establishment of their Niantic Creator Program and Beyond Reality Fund. Plus they recently announced a collaboration with Qualcomm to accelerate AR software and hardware.

As the AR Strategy Lead, Ross is a key driver of these efforts. He joined Niantic through the acquisition of his AR technology company, Escher Reality, which he founded while pursuing his PhD in Robotics at MIT.

On the whole, Ross is an entrepreneur with over a decade of experience at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds through Augmented Reality and Robotics.

Ross and I spoke on stage at the 2019 VRAR Global Summit in Vancouver. This episode includes our on-stage conversation as well as about 19 minutes of additional Q&A we did back stage.

Regular listeners might remember Ross and I did something similar at AWE back in May, and here we continue that conversation.

I ask why Pokemon GO should be considered a harbinger of what’s to come, and not an outlier of AR success. We also explore what’s needed to make AR-based experiences an everyday habit, and why developers should trust Niantic enough to build their business on their platform.

Ross goes on to give his perspective on the challenges of creating an AR-first mobile app.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Ross Finman is the AR Strategy Lead at Niantic, the company behind Pokemon GO and Harry Potter Wizards Unite.

On the whole, Ross is an entrepreneur with over a decade of experience at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds through Augmented Reality and Robotics.

Ross and I spoke on stage at the 2019 VRAR Global Summit in Vancouver. This episode includes our on-stage conversation as well as about 19 minutes of additional Q&A we did back stage.

Regular listeners might remember Ross and I did something similar at AWE back in May, and here we continue that conversation.

Ross goes on to give his perspective on the challenges of creating an AR-first mobile app.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Previous Episode

Jason Yim (Trigger) on Finding the Fun in AR After a Decade of Making Experiences

Jason Yim is the CEO and executive creative director at Trigger, a company that invents mixed reality experiences for both consumer and enterprise use for the world’s top brands, including Disney, NBA, Sony Pictures, Adidas, and many others.

Jason and his team at Trigger have been working in AR for more than a decade and are often pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Together they have logged 175,000 hours of development time.

For these reasons and others, Jason was listed in Next Reality's “30 People to Watch in Augmented Reality for 2019”.

Jason was born in Singapore and raised in Hong Kong before moving to the US for high school. He graduated with a degree in graphic design from UCLA. After starting his own design firm, he became the president and creative director for Hans Zimmer’s marketing firm, Media Revolution. After a decade there, he started Trigger.

In this conversation, we dig into a few projects Jason has done with the National Hockey League, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, and LEGO. We discuss some of the lessons learned he’s learned, and he shares his broader perspective on the industry, and where the opportunities and pitfalls lie.

Through the many projects he’s done with LEGO, Jason has come to appreciate that no amount of prior success or brand recognition should stand in the way of recognizing the uncertainty of the next big idea. LEGO doesn't assume they know the right answer. They methodically test and iterate, and as a result, they consistently find the fun in their new products and experiences.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Next Episode

2020 Kickoff: Progress to Date and the Long Road Ahead

Major companies are investing billions of dollars per YEAR into making consumer-grade, high-utility AR Smartglasses a reality, but progress is slow. There’s no Moore’s law in displays, optics, or batteries. These underlying technologies still remain a big hurdle in developing AR Smartglasses good enough for mass adoption. Additional hurdles remain around the system’s understanding of your intent and the world around you, as well as the social acceptance of these devices.

In this 2020 Kickoff episode, I look back at progress in 2019 and share a few thoughts about what I expect in 2020.

As I was thinking through what I wanted to share, I posed these questions to myself:

Why do AR Smartglasses seem inevitable to me?

Who’s chasing this dream? Why?

What progress have we seen in 2019?

What hurdles remain?

What does mobile AR teach us?

Why the long road through the enterprise?

What can we expect in 2020?

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.