About

The Past and Present Future is the technology blog of Ken Hinckley, a Principal Research at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA.

His research on sensors, mobile devices, pen computing, and pen + touch interaction has been widely covered in the press and tech blogs (MIT Technology Review, The Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, Engadget, Slashdot, and many others). Ken holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Virginia where he studied spatial interaction with Randy Pausch, now famous as the late author of “The Last Lecture.”

Ken’s research seeks to augment the capabilities of technologies and user experiences to match human abilities, skills, desires, and expectations. His work has often involved exploration of novel input devices and modalities, unusual sensors and device form-factors, with a dash of panache and a well-lets-just-try-it-and-see-if-it-works sensibility about things. He has a firm belief that you can learn a great deal by observing the natural behaviors of users and an equally firm belief that user’s can’t tell you how to design an outstanding user experience. Sometimes you just have to put together a few insights, build something new that nobody has ever thought of the need to have before, and unleash it on the world to see what happens.

Contact

Email is the best way to get a hold of me. If you need to contact me or ask me a question, shoot me a line at kenh (at) microsoft (dot) com and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

I also try to respond to all questions and comments posted on the blog. So, enter a comment on a post and I’ll get back to you. All comments on this site are moderated, so your comment won’t appear until I approve it.