fabio piparo
The Times's photo archive, overlaid on its own spatial reconstruction
the new york times

spatial journalism @ nyt r&d

Two years at NYT R&D on Spatial Journalism: AR stories for millions of readers, and tools that let reporters capture a scene instead of describing it.

client
the new york times r&d
role
ar / r&d engineer
year
2020-2022
type
ar & mixed reality
medium
instagram (spark ar) / hololens 2 / browser

From 2020 to 2022 I was part of NYT R&D's Spatial Journalism team, with the task of exploring what news becomes when it leaves the page. I led AR storytelling production for Instagram with the newsroom, delivering over forty effects for an audience of millions.

I contributed to mixed reality prototypes for journalists in the field and for the newsroom, notably the Spatial Investigator: a HoloLens 2 tool that captures the surrounding scene and streams it in real time, along with photos, video and voice memos pinned in place, plus browser tools to replay a captured session. The rest of the team's explorations are written up below.

playback of a recorded spatial and investigation session

techniques

links

the vision Spatial Journalism, the vision

for reporters Mixed Reality Tools for Journalists · MR Journalism for the Open World

stories for headsets AR Storytelling · Design Patterns for MR Stories · Journalism for MR Headsets · Interacting in 3D · Stories Across Scales · First Person POV