Adam Liss

Game and Experience Designer

About Me

I am a game and experience designer with a particular interest in AR/VR, prototyping, and technical design. I believe mechanics and game feel are key to a successful game, and even when designing tools, simulations, and other "serious" experiences, I feel it's important to incorporate an element of fun. I come from a video production background, and love creating immersive experiences with unique story and style. My goal is to explore new ways of communicating and telling stories through games and interaction.

Portfolio

  • Games
  • Videos
HNTB QA/QC TOOL
"LANESPLITTER" TRAFFIC TOOL
HNTB SPLINE TOOLS
AEC INTEGRATIONS
CESIUM TOOLS
I-24 CHOICE LANES VISUALIZATION
AMAZON SPECIAL PROJECTS
VIVE SYNC
VIVE ORIGIN
CES "RESHAPING MOBILITY" AR EXPERIENCE
U.S. OPEN VR EXPERIENCE
CLOUD-BASED DISASTER SIMULATION
CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL AR SURGERY PREP
SURTHRIVE
LOTTER-E
READING RACER
CAVEMEN
THE FIN
CLIMB TO THE OWL
INTO THE DARK: A BAT'S TALE
GLORIA'S TAILORING
MILOHAS
SKYLINE PIZZA
OCTODAD: DADLIEST CATCH INFOMERCIAL
DIVEKICK INFOMERCIAL
TEN by EIGHT INFOMERCIAL

Work Experience

Senior Immersive Media Specialist

UX Design • Coding • Simulation
  • Technical lead on a team creating immersive 3D visualizations for large-scale roadway and construction projects
  • Lead overall UX and interaction design
  • Created internal tools to enhance our environment modeling workflow, including procedural road and terrain generation, traffic and foliage placement, and an interactive QA/QC tool that allows clients and other users to place comments in 3D space
  • Developed and improved integrations with other AEC software and formats like ArcGIS feature layers, Vissim traffic simulations, and generating splines from KMZ and GeoJSON formats
  • Also created tools for aligning models with 3D satellite imagery, trimming unwanted elements, and conforming large models to the curvature of the earth
Company: HNTB
Period: June 2023 - August 2026

Instructor, Become an AR/VR Designer

AR/VR • Design Thinking • Teaching
  • Designed and taught a 12 week professional development course on AR/VR design
  • Worked with students from a variety of backgrounds to teach them the basics of 3D asset creation, XR project development in Unity, prototyping skills, and design documentation/collaboration.
Company: ELVTR
Period: October 2023 - January 2024

Senior User Experience Designer

AR/VR • UX Research • Prototyping
  • Lead design on a “teleportative” remote collaboration solution for Augmented Reality to allow remote teams to meet together as if they were in-person
  • Designed core experience that promotes sense of social presence and leverages nonverbal communication
  • Compiled UX research and ran user studies to validate the performance of our solution and gather data to share with senior leadership
  • Built prototypes to test concepts around eye contact, video quality, and spatial audio and inform hardware design
Company: Amazon
Period: January 2022 - February 2023

Senior User Experience Designer

AR/VR • UX Design • Project Management
  • Working as a user experience designer at an internal development studio within HTC Vive
  • Current projects include Sync, a VR meeting and collaboration app, and developing content for Origin, the home environment for the Vive Cosmos headset
  • Responsible for designing and prototyping ideas and new features. This includes C# scripting, writing shaders, and basic 3D modeling
  • I work closely with our development team in Taipei, sharing prototypes and design documents to communicate ideas
  • I also work with our studio lead to prioritize new features and explore how VR can add value beyond traditional in-person and video meetings
Company: HTC Vive
Period: March 2019 - January 2022

Immersive Experience Designer

AR/VR • Design • Production
  • Working as a designer making AR/VR and other immersive solutions for government and commercial clients
  • Work with clients to shape their understanding of how Augmented and Virtual Reality could be used to address their business challenges
  • Prepare design documentation and translate client requirements into art and engineering tasks
  • Rapidly develop and prototype in Unity
  • Lead team meetings, track progress in Jira, communicate status to clients
  • Delivered projects for the Oculus Go, Microsoft Hololens, Meta 2, and SpatialOS cloud platform
Company: Deloitte Digital
Period: June 2016 - March 2019

Producer, Director, and Editor

Shooting • Editing • Coordinating
  • Created independent video production company to produce ads, Kickstarter videos, and other video projects.
  • Wrote contracts, set up interviews, and coordinated shoots.
  • Also developing and producing a web series about the rise of zombies in popular culture.
Company: Man Alive Productions
Period: October 2011 - August 2014

Post-Production Coordinator

Editing • Content Management • Outreach
  • Managed FORA.tv's presence on YouTube, Hulu, iTunes, and other video sites.
  • Streamlined DVD production workflow by writing a script to automatically create chaptered DVDs.
  • Negotiated licensing agreements with various film and television outlets.
  • Worked with marketing team to promote timely and relevant videos.
Company: FORA.tv
Period: January 2012 - September 2012

Editor

Editing • Copy Writing • Curating
  • Ingested video in multiple formats and encoded for web distribution.
  • Added bugs, bumpers, and titles to videos; performed color and audio correction.
  • Wrote titles and descriptions, entered relevant metadata, and attached images to CMS.
  • Watched through videos looking for exceptional content to post on YouTube and other sites.
Company: FORA.tv
Period: August 2008 - January 2012

Education

Carnegie Mellon University

Masters of Entertainment Technology • Entertainment Technology Center

Projects

  • Surthrive: An experimental art game aimed at changing the way people think about the aftermath of natural disasters.
  • Lotter-E: A mobile game for the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries and the Atlantic Lottery in Canada that will serve as a proof of concept for new ways the lottery can use games to improve the planet.
  • Cavemen: A semester-long project to develop content for a CAVE 3-wall projection space.
  • Building Virtual Worlds: Over 11 weeks, worked as a member of 5 different teams to rapidly design, test, and build games in Unity. I did everything from rigging and animating to level design, running playtest sessions, and even some programming.

Graduated: 2016

The Colorado College

Bachelor Of Arts In English, Film Track • Minor in Mathematics
  • In charge of marketing for Colorado College Film Series
  • Founding member of Colorado College Film Union

Graduated: 2008