Oben
virtual avatars
I was the founding Product hire at Oben, a customized avatar API for content creation. In 2017 we built the world’s first avatar on the blockchain focused on serving international markets in Korea and China. I was responsible for setting up Oben’s product and design processes; hired 2 designers, built dozens of early prototypes, and rallied a cross functional team of engineers and technologists around a product development culture.
Context
Oben's market opportunity was focused on Asia-Pacific, in particular, the rising middle class of young female millennials in China. We saw an opportunity to help connect small, tight knit groups of friends by allowing them to communicate stories in a new medium.
Solution
Storychain is a social platform for virtual avatars: Secondlife meets Snapchat — users create short narrative videos with their avatars in AR environments and co-create them with friends by stitching together stories in sequence. I led the development of this product from idea to launch.
R&D and internal tools
Our research teams needed to build clean, accurate datasets to develop our avatar technologies (voice data, 3D facial capture). I refined our capture methods into mobile apps to quickly collect data from participants around the world.
