Episode 79 - Creating Virtual Worlds with Timoni West

This is a conversation with Timoni West at Unity Labs about the emerging tech of Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed reality. We talk about how these new worlds are being created, the challenges that need to be overcome, and how they will be different than you may have assumed from watching your favorite sci-fi movies.

Links

See Timoni’s Website and Bio:

Timoni West is the Director of XR Research at Unity, where she leads a team of cross-disciplinary artists and engineers exploring new interfaces for human-computer interaction. Currently, her team focuses on spatial computing: how we will live, work, and create in a world where digital objects and the real world live side-by-side. One of her team’s first tools, EditorXR, a tool for editing Unity projects directly in virtual reality, won SF Design Week’s first-ever Virtual Tech award in 2018.

A longtime technologist, Timoni was formerly SVP at Alphaworks, co-founder of Recollect, and CEO of Department of Design, a digital agency. She's worked for startups across the country, including Foursquare, Flickr, Causes, and Airtime.

Timoni serves on the OVA board and is an advisor to Tvori and Spatial Studios, among others. In 2017, Timoni was listed in Next Reality News’ Top 50 to Watch. Additionally, she serves on XRDC’s advisory board, is a Sequoia Scout, and was a jury member for Cannes Lion 2019 and ADC 2018.

Unity Labs on Twitter

Selected Youtube Videos:
Authoring for Mixed Reality (2018)
VR/AR Global Summit (2018)
Reality Lab Lecture (2019)

Milgram’s Spectrum of Reality
Unity Project MARS: Mixed and Augmented Reality Studio

Movies and TV Shows mentioned: Star Wars, Terminator, X-men (Magneto), Harry Potter, Marvel Universe
Products: Tamagotchi, Nest Thermostat

Related Episodes

Episode 54 on 5g and it’s relationship with AR/VR
Episode 38 with our predictions panel
Episode 7 with Dennis Crowley on the future with AR/VR and inspiration from movies