Zac Duff (JigSpace) on Embodied Cognition and Leveraging AI + Spatial Computing to Transform Communication

AR Show with Jason McDowall

Zac Duff is the co-founder and CEO of JigSpace, a company focused on making it simple to create and share 3D instructions for anything, or, as their tag line suggests, making the hard to explain hard to forget.

If you’ve watched the introduction of the Apple Vision Pro, or seen the demos or device itself, then you’ve had a glimpse of JigSpace when you saw the beautifully rendered Formula F1 car with the animation of the airflow around the wings and body.

Zac’s story starts in Tasmania, where he developed an early passion for 3D and game design. He studied game design in Australia before working in the games industry and beginning to teach digital art and game design. It was in early efforts to use 3D to teach a concept that Zac found the first seeds of inspiration for what became JigSpace.

In this conversation, we go onto discuss:

- Zac’s path from game design to 3D to the discovery and pursuit of "embodied cognition",

- the origin story for the company,

- raising early funding,

- highlights and lessons learned at Boost VC's accelerator,

- explanation of a "jig" and the axioms for building a product and company around them,

- example early customers and use cases,

- the relationship with Apple and being part of the Apple Vision Pro launch,

- the cultural shift in expectations around 3D and communication, and more.

Links From The Episode

- App: [Vermillion](https://vermillion-vr.com/) - VR painting app

- Book: [Dune](https://amzn.to/4bL3ijT) by Frank Herbert. There are 6 books in this series.

- Game: [Gorilla Tag](https://www.gorillatagvr.com/) - VR game

- Game: [Frog Fractions](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1194840/Frog_Fractions_Game_of_the_Decade_Edition/) - Classic Flash game, now available on Steam.

- Blog Post: [JigSpace is in the driver’s seat](https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=mjvi0bc2) from the Apple Developer Blog.

- Product Page: [JigSpace on the Apple Vision Pro](https://www.jig.space/apple-vision-pro)

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.