Three key points from the document: 1. A survey of creative technologists found that augmented reality is gaining popularity as a field they expect to spend more time on in the future, while hardware is seeing a decline. 2. Those working in creative technology report being mostly happy in their jobs, though many feel their coworkers only have a partial understanding of what creative technologists do. 3. Advice for breaking into the field includes focusing on a specialty, being passionate about the work, constantly learning new skills, and building your own projects to showcase your abilities.

1. 2019
THE STATE OF CREATIVE
TECHNOLOGY REPORT
TBD Labs
Area of Effect

2. WHAT DID WE LEARN?
Hi there friend,
Much of creative technology is about identifying what the future holds so it is exciting to share what trends we are seeing now
that we have three years of data.
One such trend shows that Creative Technology is becoming more client-facing – a welcomed development since this has been a
consistent, year-over-year desire. Regarding the actual work, Experience Design, Instillations and Front End Development
continue to take up the most time, but AR is gaining – and Creative Technologists are predicting this trend will only continue.
What about the core issue: does anyone understand what Creative Technologists do? The answer is still “kinda”. What’s
interesting though is that those working in Creative Technology are mostly happy in their jobs – a finding that has become truer
each year of the survey. Maybe it isn’t so important to be understood after all?
As always, we hope this report continues the conversation about the intersection of creativity and technology.
Sam Joseph
Founder, TBD Labs
Head of Strategy, Area of Effect

3. THE WORK

4. WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING FIELDS
DO YOU SPEND MOST OF YOUR TIME ON?
Looking at long-term trends, Hardware is seeing gradual decline, Back End Dev a steep decline and AR a big incline. While the
latter two would be applauded by anyone in the Creative Technology community, it is interesting to see Hardware's decline while
Installations stays strong. A possible explanation worth investigating is if there is a decline in physical product development.

5. THINKING ABOUT THE NEXT THREE TO FIVE YEARS, WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING FIELDS
DO YOU THINK YOU WILL SPEND THE MOST TIME ON?
AR is the only consistently rising prediction while AI/ML has begun to emerge. VR and UX are trending downwards - likely for
different reasons though. UX is becoming more and more established as its own specialty while VR may just be suffering from
inflated expectations from a few years ago.

6. WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING FIELDS DO YOU SPEND MOST OF YOUR
TIME ON NOW VS IN THREE-FIVE YEARS?
AR is the popular pick for where the attention of CTs is going: the prediction puts it as the dominate field for time spent and would
result in the biggest shift from any current time spent. Other predictions are that Installations and VR will continue at their current
rate while Front End Dev will drop dramatically. However, this may be aspirational in light of comments found later in the results.

7. WHAT IS YOUR
FAVORITE SOURCE OF
TECH NEWS?
Websites
Colossal, Creative Applications, Dezeen,
Engadget, Gizmodo, Hackaday, Hacker News,
Insite VR&AR, IT News, Lifehacker, PSFK, Re/Code,
TechCrunch, Techmeme, Verge, Wired
Newsletters
Programming language newsletters, TBD Labs,
The Hustle, TLDR, Versioning, Y Combinator
Other
Academic papers, Design Week, Podcasts, Direct
from companies developing and shipping
BrandActivation.com, Fashion Newsletters,
FutureShift, Instagram, LinkedIn, My Mother,
Newspapers, Product Hunt, Rhizomatiks, Tesla,
Wikipedia
WHAT IS YOUR MOST
SURPRISING SOURCE
OF TECH NEWS?
Platforms
Dev.to, Front-End Front, Reddit, Sidebar, Twitter
People
Daito Manabe, Quayola, Ryoji Ikeda, Your mom
(she's going to be pissed she was only mentioned
once)

8. THE
PROCESS

9. WHICH PARTS OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS ARE YOU INVOLVED IN?
Concepting/Ideating and Prototyping continue to be the cornerstones of Creative Technologists usage. As mentioned, it is great to
see the increase of client involvement (Presentations and Briefings/Kickoffs) as that has been a consistent desire of CTs over the
past three years (see next page).

10. WHICH PARTS OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS SHOULD YOU BE INVOLVED IN?
It is interesting to see the gap between Concepting/Ideating and Prototyping remain consistent from last year. While Prototyping is
still high, it would appear there is a group of CTs who don't feel it is critical to the job. There is a weird bounce back effect for
Developing/Executing from last year at the same time that Strategy/Brief Development saw the opposite effect. Something to keep
an eye on.

11. IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT
THE PROCESS WHAT WOULD IT BE?
"Creative Technologists are not producers or
developers."
"It's linear approach, it should be iterative."
"No static mocks, the truth is in the build."
"Closer tech integration in ideation."
"Integration of silos throughout the entire
process (creatives, production, strategy, account
all meeting and working from start to finish). No
more hand offs."
"Deeper integration in business dev."
"Time to explain and train others."
"Most of my grief comes from clients with
unrealistic technical expectations and
unwillingness to change those expectations."
"More clarity from client in terms of their
objectives, and more freedom for the agency
from client to reach those objectives."
"Clients investing the right amount rather than
pushing for cheapest option."
"A lot of places just want a flashy prototype to
show that they're #innovating. I wish there was
more of a pipeline for consumer-facing IoT and
CT projects at large companies."
"Process is fine, knowledge of why creative tech
is needed is not."

12. THE JOB

13. HOW WELL DO YOU FEEL YOUR CO-WORKERS UNDERSTAND
WHAT A CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIST DOES?
Completely
Get It
Not At All
We appear to be trending in the right direction - albeit ever so slightly. Driving the middle of the road response was 49% of CTs
responding with a 2 on the scale. This is actually very consistent with years past as 2018 saw 49% and 2017 saw 46% responding
with a 2. Perhaps next year we look into who gets it and who doesn't to see if it varies by field (ie, Creative Director vs Producer).

14. HOW DO YOU DEFINE CREATIVE
TECHNOLOGIST/CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY?
"A generalist creative and developer specialized
in cutting edge technologies."
"Building the recently possible."
"Creative technology is primarily front end
development with the skillset to also lightly
design or light back end work."
"Creative Technology is the practice of
approaching telling stories through the lens of
innovative platforms instead of traditional
media."
"I tend to use 'designer and technologist' because
I think myself as a designer first, who work and
use emerging media and tech as primary media.
As does an art director with the visual media."
"It's art with digital means, man."
"It's just technology."
"Making technology approachable."
"Non-scientific/economic use of computation;
Interactive Media."
"Recently, I've moved into 'innovation strategy'
but my role is the same. This was to combat the
general confusion around the title from clients. It
seems developers have started using the term
creative technologist to make jobs sound better
but it has made the term murky."
"The combination of seemingly unrelated
technologies to create something new."

15. HOW LIKELY ARE YOU TO SWITCH JOBS THIS YEAR?
Extremely
Likely
Not at all
likely
It would appear CTs are trending towards being satisfied with their jobs. This is particularly interesting as in good economies
people tend to job hunt more. Either way, we are all for people being happy.

16. ADVICE

17. DEFINE YOUR
SPECIALTY AND BE
WELL AWARE OF YOUR
STRENGTHS. IT WILL
HELP COMPANIES
BETTER UNDERSTAND
YOUR ADDED VALUE.

18. WHAT IS YOUR BEST PIECE OF ADVICE FOR SOMEONE TRYING TO BREAK INTO
THE CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY FIELD?
"Try to fit into other fields first (design, engineering,
product management, etc). Breadth of experience will
help you meld all aspects together."
"Take the user's perspective, focus on the experience
and force yourself to let technology be second."
"You are a creative first and an engineer second. Think
about your solutions critically and don't use a buzzy
tech unless it really is the best way to get your message
across."
"Don't focus on what programming language you need
to learn. Focus on your ideas and then go on to find out
the technology you need to learn to achieve them."
"See yourself as Designer + Developer. It's a pairing as
natural as right and left hand, or the two sides of a coin:
both are necessary to create great things, but they're
also very distinct."
"Generalists are great and still important, but finding a
specific skill set and owning it will help you get noticed
and get work."
"It's great to be a jack of all trades, but you should still
master one thing."
"You must be a master not a dabbler."
"Being a generalist is OK - don't ever apologize for
learning something new or picking up a new skill even if
it's unrelated to what you work on everyday."
"Diversify and be dangerous in many fields. Know how
to stitch together different industrie."
ON WHAT
TO BE...

19. BE PASSIONATE
CAUSE SHIT'S
GONNA BREAK.

20. WHAT IS YOUR BEST PIECE OF ADVICE FOR SOMEONE TRYING TO BREAK INTO
THE CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY FIELD?
"Keep learning and improving your code writing,
organizational thinking, and process."
"Make sure that you end each day by knowing that you
have either learn or understand a new piece of
technology or get inspired by one piece of creative
tech."
"Learn as much as you can by volunteering, mentorship,
classes, etc. Learn, practice, and develop."
"Find ways of updating the agency and client on a
consistent basis. Display the true potential of what's out
there, so that the ideas the agency ends up presenting
are unexpected."
"Learn to teach."
"Be cultural."
"Think more about the now and have the future
influence it."
"Experiment, build, document and publish your work."
"Always be making things. You can't wait for a client to
come up with something cool. It's up to you to make the
creative tech pieces you want to see in the world."
"Build things you're uncomfortable building."
"No matter what it is, take it apart and put it back
together. Figure out how everything works."
"Don't have an ego - always have the state of mind that
constant learning will be the key to success."
ON WHAT
TO DO...

21. WHAT IS YOUR BEST PIECE OF ADVICE FOR SOMEONE TRYING TO BREAK INTO
THE CREATIVE TECHNOLOGY FIELD?
"When I was working full time CT
positions for larger companies, I never got
a CT role that was ready and available to
be hired for. Every job I had involved me
either converting another tech role into a
CT job, or selling the company that they
should create the position. I left that to go
freelance now, which I think is a better fit
for 'pure' CT roles at the moment."
"Whether you're trying to go creative or
production, try to find a place that
understands what you do. Once you've
got experience, then go work somewhere
more traditional that will pay a lot. I find
traditional agencies hire creative
technologists to make them 'more
innovative' but are very resistant to
changes in any way. It's great when it
works out, but it is a steep battle."
ON WHERE
TO WORK...

22. THE
DEETS

23. WHO
RESPONDED?
How would you describe the type of work you do?
What type of company do you work for?
Where are you located?
37% Marketing-Focused / 33% Marketing and Product-Focused / 29% Product-Focused /
1% Anti-Consumer, Anti-Capital, Egalitarian
36% Ad Agency / 28% Innovation or Design Consultancy / 13% Media Company / 9% Freelance
/ 8% Product or Service (Client-Side) / 4% Tech Vendor / 2% Management Consulting
36% NYC / 11% London / 6% Chicago, LA, Paris, Portland, SF or Didn't Answer / 2% Amsterdam, Asia,
Atlanta, Berlin, Boston, Munich, New Delhi, New Hampshire, Toronto or Washington, DC
Total Responses
54

24. ABOUT US
TBD Labs
Area of Effect
We use creative technology to avoid participant bias in market research. By using biometrics, geo-located data
and computer vision, we are able to see how people actually behave instead of how they say they behave.
Design, prototype, iterate and repeat. We help agencies, artists and companies interact better with
machines by building connected devices, IoT platforms and computer vision systems.

25. THANKS!
TBDLabs.com
AreaOfEffect.io