Windows Phone 7: Japanese input

Working with the WP7 East Asia design team in Redmond and engineers in Tokyo, I was responsible for Japan-specific keyboard layouts, fast input methods, composition and candidate selection, and emoticon selection and organization. Usually a Mac guy, I grew to love OneNote during this period.

My design problems included:

• Arranging 50 letters on a mobile screen to type efficiently quickly. Not a trivial problem, but plenty of variations on this already exist.
• Designing a method of fast typing that improves upon feature-packed Japanese phones and the iPhone. This was significantly tricky, and I am proud of the result. (It also got me a patent.)
• Organizing [a very large number of] emoticons for smooth access while typing. A flexible design, implemented with much less content than it was meant to hold, alas. (Another patent.)

The Flower design itself

Transcribing a song as it is sung