Kurt Lorey on Blending Creativity and Technology to Shape the Future of Interactive Storytelling

Winner of the Next Gen Talent of the Year award, Kurt Lorey, Creative Technologist at Huge, represents the new generation of creators redefining how technology and storytelling intersect. With a unique blend of creativity, engineering, and design thinking, Kurt has been instrumental in pushing the boundaries of real-time, spatial, and interactive experiences. From building WebGL-powered experiences like the Android XR landing page to exploring generative 3D worlds, his work reflects how innovation can be both emotional and intelligent.

In this interview, Kurt shares his thoughts on what it means to be recognized as one of the industry’s most promising creative technologists. He opens up about his process, how empathy drives his approach to innovation, how he bridges creative and technical disciplines, and why the future of experience design lies in AI-driven, adaptive storytelling. His journey is not just about mastering technology but using it to make people feel something, turning complex systems into human, memorable moments.

Congratulations on your win! How does it feel to have earned the Next Gen Talent of the Year award?

It feels incredibly rewarding and a little surreal. So much of my work lives at the intersection of creativity and technology, usually behind the scenes making ideas tangible. To have that recognized on a larger stage is both humbling and energizing. It’s a huge motivator to keep pushing the boundaries of what creative technology can do and to keep collaborating with people who care deeply about craft and innovation.

What made you decide to enter into The Annual?

Honestly, it was a mentor who encouraged me to go for it. I tend to stay focused on the work and not the recognition, but they reminded me that sharing what you’ve built is part of how you grow and how others can learn from it. That pushed me to put my work forward, and I’m really glad I did.

What role do you think awards play in motivating creativity and innovation within the industry?

Awards like this help shine a light on experimentation. They validate the time and risk it takes to make something truly original. Beyond the recognition, they create a platform for new ideas to circulate, inspire others, and raise the collective bar for creative excellence.

You operate in the nexus of code, real-time, spatial, interactive storytelling. How do you choose which medium/tech to use (WebGL, XR, physical computing) for a given brief?

For me, the technology is never the starting point. The story is. I start by asking what emotion or interaction we want people to feel, and then work backward to the medium that best delivers it.

If the goal is reach and accessibility, WebGL often wins because it can live anywhere. If it is about presence or immersion, XR becomes powerful. When we want people to physically feel the experience through light, motion, or space, that is where physical computing comes in.

Ultimately, it is about choosing the technology that amplifies the idea rather than distracts from it. The best projects blur the line between disciplines where code, design, and narrative all move together to make something people genuinely connect with.

The Android XR landing page you built used multiple WebGL experiences. What were your biggest challenges in merging performance, interaction, narrative and fallback experiences?

The biggest challenge was creating a concise narrative that highlighted the unique features of each product while keeping the entire experience performant and cohesive.

Performance was a major focus. We had to ensure proper disposal of every scene instance to keep memory usage low across the page. Each experience loaded and unloaded dynamically, with assets streamed only when needed. That optimization was essential to maintain smooth transitions and prevent memory buildup.

At the same time, we were maintaining UI screens for multiple products that were still in active development, which meant design systems and specifications were constantly evolving. Aligning with those live changes while keeping interaction logic consistent was a moving target.

Cross-browser and cross-device support added another layer of complexity, especially balancing asset quality, input handling, and rendering performance across platforms. We designed clear fallback states for lower-tier devices so that every user, regardless of capability, still experienced the same story and emotional impact.

In the end, it was about merging strong technical discipline with narrative clarity to create something that felt fluid, responsive, and represented Android XR accurately.

As a technologist with creative instincts, how do you maintain empathy, usability and narrative so tech doesn’t become spectacle or distraction?

It starts with remembering that the audience is not here to admire the technology. They are here to feel something or understand something. I use prototyping early to test emotion and clarity rather than just effects. If an interaction or visual does not serve the story or make it more intuitive, it gets simplified or cut. The goal is to make technology invisible in the best way, where people remember how it made them feel, not how it was built.

In working across creative, engineering, UX, product domains, how do you bridge vocabulary, expectations and collaboration friction to deliver clean integration?

Translation is a big part of the job. I try to reframe technical concepts in creative language and creative intent in technical structure. Visual diagrams, shared prototypes, and clear success metrics help everyone see the same target. I also build small proof-of-concepts early, because once people can see and touch something, conversations shift from abstract to collaborative. It is less about compromise and more about alignment, with everyone contributing from their craft toward the same outcome.