Experience design firm HUSH has brought Joshue Ott on board as director of technology.
Having previously built the AR and interactive technology company Interval Studios and most recently working at experiential agency Fake Love, Ott brings valuable experience from a career at the intersection of design, technology, music and art.
Ott has been recognized for several notable projects in experiential and digital design as the discipline has matured. Through Interval Studios, he created superDraw, a software for live performance drawing that he used at venues like Mutek and Carnegie Hall, as well as Thicket, the interactive audiovisual app. At Fake Love, Ott managed its creative technology teams, serving as technical lead on client projects such as the experiential activation Wonderland for Japanese cosmetics brand SK-II, which utilized augmented reality to remix and redesign a pop-up retail space.
Ott will now lead HUSH’s teams of creatives and technologists, and integrates his approach into the earliest aspects of HUSH’s creative process. He’s developing a robust experiential prototyping practice which is focused on discovering new approaches to creative technology.
Ott brings to HUSH particular expertise in AR, which he expects to evolve quickly: “I believe AR will continue to be more and more integrated into our everyday lives,” he explained, “AR can transform space and experiences, not only adding information, but also creating otherworldly extensions to the real world in ways we haven’t seen before.”
He continued, “In the best way possible, I think AR will soon become a ‘boring’ technology, by which I mean it will pervade our lives in such a way that we no longer think about it too much. From a creative technologist standpoint, that brings a whole exciting range of opportunities which we’re actively working on now with several clients.”
According to HUSH Founding Partner David Schwarz, “We had worked with Joshue many years ago and even at that time, it was clear that he was a stand-out creative technology mind. He’s beautifully articulate, which our clients find incredibly calming and trustworthy – especially when entertaining significant technological investments. He’s completely aligned with our vision to translate complex ideas and information into experiences that are immediate, gratifying and powerful to the user. Lastly, he’s already integrating our Augmented Reality practice into our overarching experiential design offering, as we’re forecasting a post-COVID future that’s a little less tactile, and a little more personal device-reliant.”
