We have taken several projects from a research concept through development so they can research the real world. The most recent of these are within Inovo Studio. More broadly, we have experience at several big tech companies creating and developing new technologies.
Shape Cast
Our current research is focused on a novel design tool for ceramic slip casters. This was born out of our own experience and grew into the product Shape Cast. Research on Shape Cast began with qualitative work exploring the practices of slip casters. We then began technical development on ways to eliminate the need for 3D modeling yet still use 3D printing for custom ceramic forms, and in particular making new plaster molds for slip casting. We launched our beta in the Fall of 2023 and to date we have had over 2,000 designs tried with Shape Cast. See our CHI '24 LBW.
Previous Examples
QuickQut: Our first project with Inovo Studio was QuikQut, a speech enabled tool for video editing using AI. This project was inspired from research in the literature and a desire to speed up the video editing process. We developed and launched our product after significant dog-fooding. We had several successful pilot users. With the commodification of AI, commercial video editors have started to incorporate these technologies so we pivoted to go through our studio process again.
Speech Input for Tesla: Based on past research experience with speech enabled systems, Kent single handily replaced to speech input system while working at Tesla which involved changes from the operating system up into the infotainment code base and new cloud based speech and NLP system. If you give a speech command in a Tesla, that is our code. And if you're curious, ask what is the answer to life the universe and everything.
WatchPop: In 2015 with Mike Terry, Ph.D. and Adam Fourney, Ph.D. we developed and deployed WatchPop, a smart watch face for the Pebble Smartwatch. After 3 months, we reached a 1% install penetration on all Pebble Smartwatches.