Phone designer for Sony Ericsson head of interface design at Apple?

Peter Kennedy
Program Manager, Human Factors
Apple Computer

Peter Kennedy leaves a very small footprint on the internet- probably because he likes it that way- the people he works for value silence and reticence. There are a number of Patent applications floating out in the ether with his name on them. Prior to working for Apple it seems Kennedy worked on projects for both IBM and SONY ERICSSON. What could Apple want with someone with an interest in User interfaces for phones? cough iPhone… new video iPod?

Kennedy’s Previous Patent Applications- Phones and tablets

• Method for touchscreen data input- IBM – 2002
• MOBILE TERMINAL WITH ERGONOMIC IMAGING FUNCTIONS – SONY ERICSSON- 2004
• Mobile Phone Amber Alert Notification System And Method SONY ERICSSON- 2003
• Method, device and system for establishing communications with multiple communication devices SONY ERICSSON- 2002
• Wirelessly assisted contact information method (Ads beamed to phone from TV)

Touch screen User interface- fat fingers small widgets

“The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special
dialing wand, please mash the key pad with your palm, now.”The Simpsons

Kennedy is the only inventor listed on Apple’s cryptically named ‘Visual expander’ patent application. Essentially, the visual expander patent application is just a series of human-computer interaction ideas to deal with the big finger-small widget problem with touchscreens (imagine using your pudgy fingers on your screen now and try hitting the minimise orange lozenge- difficult). Typically this problem has been got around but using styli – a la Homer Simpson…

The user interface ideas in the patent revolve around making areas of the display expand visually (get larger) when they are touched and then allow further touching (allow clicking of the minimise widget after the controls have been made big). Further discussion here and bad mockup

You can get a similar effect (without the beautiful Quartz-rendering magic) from the “Universal Access” System Preference and turning “Voice Over” on – then go to the “Open VoiceOver Utility” and select Navigation and click “VoiceOver curser tracks mouse cursor”. This does very annoying things (but is obviously a great aid to the visually impaired) and seems to randomly expand things under the cursor. When the cursor is over a button or input field it is magnified so as to be better seen and to make it an easier target for clicking. My reading of the patent is that this is what the ‘Visual Expander’ would do for the Apple Tablet. The key difference being that on an Apple Tablet it would be done with nice visual effects.

From the patent:
[0053] In most cases, the visually expanded portion is made to appear like it is protruding out of the image plane. The protruding effect is typically accomplished through graphics such as shading or other similar means. The protruding effect may be implemented in a localized area of the GUI or it may be implemented at a particular GUI image such as a control box, tool bar, user interface element, and/or the like.

[0054] In one embodiment, the expanded portion includes a plateau region and a transition region. During expansion, the target area contained within the plateau region increases in size and magnification. At the same time, the transition region compresses the GUI between the target area contained in the plateau region and the remaining unexpanded portions of the GUI. As a result, the plateau region appears to raise above the remaining portions of the GUI.

Interesting ideas- but will Apple actually make a product?