Years of dedicated iOS, cloud, and web development experience.
Let me help bring your iOS project to life! I have many years of experience building iOS apps and frameworks, web applications, and cloud services. I've worked with startups, non-profits, media organizations, museums, and large software companies.
Based in San Francisco, I can work onsite or remotely, providing the entire app development lifecycle. Alternately, I can collaborate with your team, providing the specific support you need to ensure a successful project.
Design
A successful product requires quality software design. I design for maintainability and reuse, and follow well-established design patterns and Apple's Human Interface Guidelines.
Implementation
I have a thorough knowledge of the Cocoa Touch Foundation and UIKit frameworks, and years of experience working with a wide array of frameworks and libraries.
Testing
Testing is crucial in every step of the software development process. I strictly practice "building to the test," and can manage the alpha testing process through TestFlight.
Distribution
I've managed the rigorous process of submission and acceptance via the App Store, as well as Enterprise distribution within organizations.
Portfolio
Time Shift
As an Artist-in-Residence at the Exploratorium's Observatory Gallery, I created an exhibit featuring short time-lapse videos I shot throughout the Bay Area. These videos were presented in this iOS-backed video installation. Visitors use the iPad installed in the case to browse and play videos on an external monitor.
Fixel
Fixel was an Adobe Labs project with a time-limited release on the App Store. This app provides an image editing interface built around Adobe's Content-Aware Fill technology. I came on board to perform code refactoring to improve maintainability, work with a UX engineer to update the UI, add instrumentation and analytics for capturing user data, and make a number of other improvements and bug fixes.
MagicSelectionView
While at Adobe, I contributed to the Labs component of their CreativeSDK. I extracted proprietary MagicSelectionView technology from an internally developed test bed application, packaged it into an iOS Framework, documented the API, and build a demo application. The image gallery above includes screenshots from a demo of the API.
Cabinet of Curiosities
The Exploratorium's Tinkering Studio brought me in to develop a multi-media guide to a collection of artworks, contraptions, and other oddities on display in their "Cabinet of Curiosities." This system consists of three iPads mounted on podiums in front of each cabinet, which visitors can browse to learn more about what's on display. The content is managed remotely via a custom Drupal installation, and the tablets content can be updated via the local WiFi network. I worked closely with the Studio's own UX designers to develop the interface.
PowerPath
The PowerPath product line by Emanate Wireless is a smart asset tracking and monitoring system for use by medical organizations such as hospitals. These tags can be located, monitored, and configured via Bluetooth LE, using the iOS app I developed for them. I worked closely with their hardware engineers to refine the communication protocol, and implemented features including signal-strength based proximity detection, asset identification, tag configuration, and time-based visualizations of asset resource usage.
SparkChat
Working with Adobe's Creative Technologies Lab Artist-in-Residence, Daniela Steinsapir, I was on the development team of the experimental social networking app SparkChat. This app used sophisticated content-analysis technology to determine the subject matter and emotional timbre of the messages, and spontaneously pull corresponding content from the users' other social media feeds (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) into the conversation. My role included building the iOS app as well as the AWS-hosted Node.js chat server.
Skills
I've worked with with a broad set of tools, languages, frameworks, and design principles, including:
- Objective-C
- XCode
- CoreData
- CoreBluetooth
- AVFoundation
- CoreMidi
- WebKit
- CoreLocation
- MapKit
- Custom UI Development
- iOS Framework Development
- Social APIs (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
- MVC Design
- Human Interface Guidelines
- Enterprise Distribution
- App Store Distribution
- Apple Configurator
- Cloud Services (AWS, Parse, Node.js)
- JavaScript
- JQuery
- HTML5/CSS
- JSON
- XML
- AJAX
- Provisioning
- Analytics
- RESTful APIs
- Java
- PHP
- Perl
- Unix/Linux System Admin
- Relational Databases
- Object Databases
- TCP/IP Networks
- Wordpress
- Drupal
Clients
For the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco, I developed a number of Enterprise applications for use on the museum floor: a multi-device, remotely manageable video and image gallery; a multi-media exhibit guide with a customized Drupal back-end; and an iOS-backed time-lapse video installation, with a companion app on the App Store.
At Adobe Research, I worked with researchers at the Creative Technologies Lab to build applications demonstrating the innovative technologies developed within the group. I contributed to projects including audio editing tools, painting apps such as PaintCan, as well as the CreativeSDK frameworks.
For Emanate Wireless, a startup developing a smart asset monitoring system for medical equipment, I was the sole iOS developer for the initial implementation of the PowerPath mobile app, which uses the iOS Core Bluetooth Framework to communicate with Emanate's hardware.
About Ken
While I'm currently focused primarily on iOS, I have a broad set of skills and experience, and I'm continually learning new technologies. Early in my career I built and maintained web sites for a chain of weekly newspapers. As a Senior Developer at KQED Public Broadcasting in San Francisco, I developed their primary web content management system, as well as tools to facilitate collaboration between the web and broadcast teams.
Fascinated with the possibilities of the iOS platform, in 2012 I transitioned to iPhone and iPad development. I was in an extended engineering contract at Adobe, and continue to work on projects for the Exploratorium, small startups, and other organizations.
Besides my love for coding and all things techie, I have a creative side as well, and always enjoy being able to bring these worlds together. I've been an avid musician since the age of 12, playing guitar as well as dabbling with electronic music. I've produced many time-lapse videos, some of which span very long periods of time, or employ experimental camera techniques. I like playing with electronics, and created a combination book and kit that takes a creative approach to teaching kids about electronics, and I hosted a series of how-to videos co-produced by Radio Shack and Popular Mechanics. And as much as I like technology, the coolest job I ever had was teaching sailing on the Merrimack River in Lawrence, Massachusetts.