Hutchings earns third U.S. patent

Duke Hutchings, associate professor of computing sciences, has been awarded patent #9,671,922 by the U.S Patent and Trademark Office.

The patent application titled “Scaling of Displayed Objects with Shifts to the Periphery” was a collaborative effort between Hutchings and researchers George Robertson, Brian Meyers and Greg Smith of Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington.

The main component of the invention, named Scalable Fabric, is a method of grouping and manipulating applications or windows on large- and multiple-display computer systems. The contribution by Hutchings centers around discrete manipulations with a primary focus on keyboard interaction with Scalable Fabric.

Hutchings has previously presented the work at the Association for Computing Machinery Advanced Visual Interfaces conference.