The typical day of an augmented reality developer

Some days ago on Quora a guy asked what is the average day of an augmented reality developer.

Well, I’m an AR/VR developer and I’ve really focused on AR the period that I’ve made a consultancy about a medical training project involving the use of Hololens. During that period I’ve been able to understand how Hololens is an awesome product full of potential, but also an experimental product with lots of issues.

I decided to use some irony and describe my typical job day with this bullet list. Hope you’ll enjoy it…

My typical work day was:

• Arrive at work
• Take HoloLens
• Oh damn, HL battery is low. Attach it to power supply
• Launch Unity
• Start coding
• Oh damn, Unity crashed
• Restart Unity
• How can i do this strange thing?
• Google search.
• Google didn’t help (HL devs are too few)
• Damn
• Make up some algo
• Let’s try Holographic mode to test the program
• Unity crashes again. Damn
• Restart Unity
• Try Holographic mode
• Thanks to low FOV what I thought could work has a terrible UX
• Recode stuff
• Retry them
• Lunch
• Back to office
• Code new feature implementing vocal commands
• Debug them screaming English words in the office
• Scream CHARGE! CHARGE! CHARGE!
• Recognition does not work, since you have to speak with Redmond accent
• CHAAAARGE! CHAAAAAAARGE!
• All people in the office look at you like an idiot
• Feel shame on yourself
• CHARGE! GEORGE!
• Oh, glass recognized the word “Charge” only when you said “George”
• Remove vocal commands
• Code other stuff
• Try using air-taps as clicking commands
• Finger hurts for too many taps
• First tests seem to works
• Try to deploy
• Wait 3 hours for the build and deploy to complete
• Get some coffees
• Try the program on Standalone. Results are unsatisfying because you forgot to remove some debug code you put somewhere
• Try to fix stuff
• Unity crashes
• Battery is low
• Throw HoloLens out of the window and start your job at McDonald’s

If you’ve ever worked with Hololens, you surely know all the little problems this device have… and I hope this list has gifted you a little smile! If this is the case, click on that little heart below here…