<aside> 💡 This project is now fully staffed — thanks for your interest but we are not currently looking for additional project members. The posting is retained for reference.
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We're ramping up for a new project at Ink & Switch!
We're an industrial research lab working on digital tools for creativity and productivity.
We believe that there's something special about the tablet form-factor. These devices allow you to take your projects away from the desktop computer—from relaxed rumination while reclining in a chair, to thinking through a problem by sketching in a focused posture.
Unfortunately, tablets are currently consumption-oriented appliances. We think this could be different. We explored how a tablet could be a part of the creative process with projects like Capstone and Muse. Recently, with the Inkbase project, we explored how to add a layer of programmability to hand-drawn strokes.
We gained a lot of intuitions in our pencil-programming thread, and want to apply them to working with discrete combinatorial problems—ranging from everyday scheduling problems, seating families at wedding tables, or iterating over drum machine rhythms, to designing bookshelves that fit our specific needs.
We’re after a tool where you can make hand-drawn marks (sketch) about your problem, introduce constraints and rules graphically, ask the system for a set of proposed solutions, and iterate on them together with the tool. Importantly, we want the solving/constraint-satisfying to feel fluid and sketchy—informal and conversational.
We’re building a native iPad application written in Swift, with an embedded SMT solver.
We’re looking for engineers who are well-versed in Swift, with experience working with Apple Pencil and rendering hand-drawn marks. Bonus points for previous experience in designing DSLs in Swift, interfacing with C/C++ libraries, or doing shape/gesture recognition.
As an engineer on the team, you will help shape the engineering side of the project from start to finish. This includes architecting the application, taking care of input processing and rendering, interfacing with the solver, ensuring that speed and performance is adequate, and helping us iterate on the design of the visual language for solving combinatorial problems.
This is a research project, so being able to figure out which corners to cut, and where to spend engineering efforts, is going to be necessary.
The position is full-time during its duration, currently scheduled to run from late March through May 2022 for the duration of 10 weeks.
You should be prepared to be regularly available during hours that overlap with the team, in this case anchored in CET (GMT+1) but ranging to western North America (GMT-7). Our usual meeting time is 9:30am PT / 18:30 CET.
Compensation is USD $2,500 per week throughout the project.