Innovation & Play

As Technical Lead, Ventures at Myplanet (2019 - 2021) I was responsible for doing the impossible: showing differentiation in the saturated software services market by crafting compelling experiences in emerging technologies, with virtually no budget, and going from rookie to expert in two to four weeks at a time.

The first project? create an Alexa Skill that renders custom content in the Focals wearable glasses. Together with a designer and videographer, the project was completed in little over three weeks, including all marketing materials.

How might augmented reality enhance the shopping experience in e-commerce?

In a little over a week, I conducted a research spike aimed at exploring how live AR content can enhance the e-commerce shopping experience. This involved evaluating web rendering engines as well as sourcing, scaling and converting a 3D asset (i.e., a plate of jerk chicken) for rendering via Apple's Pixar USDZ engine.

In the world of assistive technology, where "better than nothing" is an acceptable business goal, the company I co-founded (Komodo OpenLab, 2010 - 2018) always aimed to change the game. And we did.

Most of us don't think about it, but we use devices interchangeably all the time (e.g., from computer, to mobile, to tablet, back to mobile, then computer) but if you have a mobile impairment, you could only use one device all day, significantly limiting your productivity. We changed that and obtained a patent for it. Now people with mobility impairments can use any device, whenever they want, independently.

Back in 2014 my son got obsessed with rocket stages after watching a 1970's documentary on space exploration, so we wondered if we could use magnets and the 3D printer at work to make a shuttle that could detach and snap back each stage.

As a bonus, we also learned about dual extrusion printing, which was essential in mocking up the shuttle's thermal protection layer and make it look very realistic.

LightRider was an experiment in sustainability, but mostly, I was getting tired of constantly replacing or recharging bike light batteries.

In the end, the whole assembly got ripped off while the bike was parked at Dundas square 😢 Fortunately, I had already taken a video of the best part of the whole project: The LED strip animation inspired by Night Rider.