While VR headsets have been with us for at least a decade, AR hardware barely exists today; indeed, the very components that will comprise the hardware scarcely exist, making it a truly zero-to-one innovation challenge. Meta’s Head of AR Glasses Hardware, Caitlin Kalinowski is helping to lead that charge. Kalinowski hails from Portsmouth, NH and studied mechanical engineering at Stanford University. She is a veteran of Meta’s VR team and led product design and integration of the Meta Quest.
Kalinowski spoke recently with Tech@ about the differences between VR and AR and how in her current role she is developing hardware that needs to be smaller, lighter, and similar or equally powerful to the VR headsets she helped develop earlier in her career. Kalinowski also explores how diversity – of skills, of temperaments, of sensibilities, of ethnicity, of gender, and sexuality – is critical for innovation. Finally, she discusses the role of collaboration and creating a safe space for failures that helps navigating the massive space between zero and one.
Read more about the future of AR:
Read Caitlin Kalinowski’s interview with Tech@ on the future of wearable technology.
