Schlagwort: Kanzul Fatima Arif

  • E120 – Inside Cookmate: Developing for Snap Spectacles and The Futures of Smart Glasses with Kanzul Fatima Arif from Headraft

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    Thomas Riedel
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    Thomas Bedenk
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    Kanzul Fatima Arif

    Not much is known about Snap’s next device, except what CEO Evan Spiegel shared last year during their annual Lens Fest. The device promises to be better, smaller, more beautiful, and so on. Sure 🙂

    If there is one person outside of Snap who is best positioned to know what’s going on at the company and how they work, it might be Kanzul Fatima Arif. As the Head of Innovation at Headraft, she worked closely with Snap to develop Cookmate, a hero project for the American social media and XR leader, which is showcased whenever possible.

    That is because the app truly impresses with its stellar user interface on the 5th generation Snap Spectacles. While developing Cookmate, Kanzul and her team worked so closely with Snap that she was actually able to influence their development. For example, how pinned objects behave, how fonts are readable best of the Spectacles or how face tracking works for diverse skin tones.

    At the beginning of this episode, Kanzul tells us her personal XR story: the moving and empowering journey of an Pakistani woman who discovers the power of AR to process her own history. She also provides a deep dive into how Headraft handled the shutdown of Spark AR and the situation with 8th Wall and what the agency’s strategy looks like now. Finally, she describes in great detail how the team developed Cookmate, which meant stepping away from traditional game development methodologies.

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  • E119 – 10x Expertinnen über 2026 in XR! CES Zusammenfassung, Meta und Apple News

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    Thomas Riedel
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    Thomas Bedenk

    Willkommen in 2026! Zur ersten Ausgabe des Jahres lassen wir 10 Expert:innen zu Wort kommen. Wie stellen sie sich für 2026 auf? Was treibt sie um, was treibt sie an?

    Wir haben es uns nicht nehmen lassen bei der Kuratierung der Expert:innen dem Jahr 2026 unseren eigenen Dreh zu geben. In Zeiten der Broligarchie und der anhaltend schlechten News wird es unserer Meinung nach Zeit für deutlich mehr weibliche Stimmen:

    Anna Graf, Kanzul Fatima Arif, Emily Olman, Valerie Riffaud Cangelosi, Gerhard Schröder, Lisa Schulz, Petra Dahm, Saskia Groenewegen, Hanna Johnson, Susanne Ahmadseresht.

    Aber auch wir, also Thomas und Thomas versuchen uns 2026 anzunähern: Was wir schon über Geräte-Releases wissen und wie wir das Potential von Snap Specs und Android XR einschätzen.

    Weitere Themen:

    • CES 2026: Asus ROG Xreal R1, RayNeo X3 Pro, Rokid Ai Glasses Style, Goertek Reference Design, 70° ZOE Waveguide von Lumus, uvm.
    • Meta: Yann LeCun kritisiert Meta, Disney+ App für Quest, Meta Ray-Ban Display Probleme und neue Features, Neural Band als Produkt
    • Apple kürzt Werbebudget um 95%

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