// creative technology leader

Connecting innovation with timeless, human-centered storytelling.

XR Product Management · Creative Direction · Experience Design · Fine Art · Mentoring designers & engineers · Bringing people together across disciplines

Selected Work

[ all 21 projects → ]
// about

I'm a creative technology leader, creative director, and product manager — with the vision to imagine new innovations and the experience to make them real.

more about me →
The early-adopter team with David Byrne's Tight Spot installation
early-adopter with David Byrne's Tight Spot · photo by Bridget Batch
// in their words

People who have worked with me, and for me.

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Selected Work · 2008 — 2026

Twenty-one projects across public space, healing, learning, platforms, and brand.

A through-line runs across all of it: technology that strengthens reality rather than replacing it. Select any project to read the full story.

About

The vision to imagine new innovations — and the experience to make them real.

I'm a creative technology leader, creative director, and product manager. For fifteen years I've led cross-functional teams — designers, engineers, writers, artists — building augmented and virtual reality that turns real places into experiences people step inside.

I founded Early-Adopter (acquired by The Glimpse Group, NASDAQ: GGRP, 2018) and co-created Membit, the easiest no-code AR tool on the market. I'm available to help companies take products from idea to prototype and prototype to finished — and to advise on strategy, messaging, and the coming AR/VR shift.

The early-adopter team with David Byrne's Tight Spot installation
early-adopter with David Byrne's Tight Spot · photo by Bridget Batch
Capabilities
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Design Philosophy

How can immersive technology change the way people experience a place?

That question sounds technical. It isn't — it's about meaning. The world already holds more meaning than we can see; the technologies I work with don't create those stories, they reveal them, and let people step inside as participants. Everything in my practice resolves into six working principles.

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The technology keeps changing; the philosophy doesn't. Design for real places, real bodies, and real communities, lead with meaning, embrace constraints — and people won't just watch what you've made. They'll walk through it, find it, and become part of it.

Augmented reality installation beneath the San Pedro Square arch
// manifesto

AR Is Not What You Think

A manifesto for augmented reality as a medium of place, embodiment, and participation — not a smaller screen floating in front of the world.

[ read on LinkedIn → ]
Contact

Let's build something worth stepping inside.

Available for Chief Product Officer, Creative Director, and product leadership roles — and for consulting on strategy, messaging, and the AR/VR shift. Idea to prototype, or prototype to finished.

Jay Van Buren Creative Technology · Immersive Experience · XR © 2026