I’ve been working at building augmented reality tech for a while. It’s so math heavy that getting the minimum viable product out the door is excruciating. So the project has stalled.

In the mean time, I’ve learned a little about lean. And I’ve come to realize that I’ve been building a solution to too many problems. Worst of all, I’ve been split between the problems of too many people. So it’s time to regroup. Figure out who matter, and what matters to them.

In the broadest sense, there are three groups in augmenting reality: the audience, the artists, and the patrons. Ultimately the driving force is the taste of the audience. We’ll only give our attention to the most beautiful and useful. But at the moment, the landscape is so sparse that the only projects that are seeing life are ones with good backing or a driven creator. The sponsors tend to be limiting their support to marketing efforts, movies and brands are hunting cool, there isn’t much sponsorship of abstract art or niche business tools. But the budgets of these sponsors are constrained by the domain of the possible. Artists who know the field are the best guides. Given the latitude, I think they’ll prefer to make sponsored projects with the best tools they can find.

So that’s where I want to go. I want to build the best tools an artist could wield. So what I need to do now is learn what sucks most about today’s tools. I need to know how projects are being built today, how they are designed, constructed, delivered and maintained. Would the most good from a better CAD, framework, toolkit or platform? What’s the stack of tools to make most beautiful augments? What’s the most flexible stack for getting a working solution turned around quickly?