CEO, Mirra
Kevin is the founder of Mirra, a PaaS design tool that allows anyone to create professional quality AR and VR experiences – without 3D expertise and
without code. Prior to Mirra, Kevin founded and was CEO of the design and innovation consultancy Method. He is the author of Experience Design: A Framework for Integrating Brand, Experience, and Value.
One of 2017’s biggest challenges for XR was slower-than-expected hardware adoption (especially VR). That key leading indicator governs the installed base on which other opportunities develop, including content and software.
But beyond sheer hardware sales, the sector has further suffered from fragmentation. The already small user base is divided into smaller subsets when you consider platforms and (sometimes) walled gardens like HTC/Valve, Oculus, and Daydream in VR; and ARkit and ARCore in AR.
This makes it harder for developers to justify ROI in content development because an already-small addressable market gets smaller. It’s similar in some ways to the platform wars of the smartphone era (iOS vs Android), but with far fewer users to subdivide… so far at least.