Chris Billard Email & Phone Number

Dearborn, Michigan, Us

As senior developer and team lead of the developer tools team, my work was divided between the LibMuse SDK, developing the next generation of GUI research tools and supporting the team to help everyone achieve their goals.The LibMuse SDK is a set of libraries that can be integrated into Android, iOS, Windows or Unity applications and allow the developer to connect and receive data from the Muse headband. I was in charge of the design for both the Windows and Unity platforms, expanding support to include new hardware, sensors, and research algorithms. It was an exciting opportunity to work with Objective C, Java, the Windows UWP C++ APIs as well as C#. Challenges included maintaining a consistent API across all platforms and evolving the API for new hardware while still maintaining backwards compatibility.Muse Direct is the next generation research tool which provides a simple GUI interface that allows you to connect to a Muse headband and view, save and share the EEG and sensor data. I designed the cross-platform architecture that enables core application functionality to be shared between Windows, Android and iOS, minimizing the amount of rework needed to support each platform. React Native is used to share the UI on the mobile devices while XAML and C++ are used for the Windows platform.As lead, support of the team comes first. This includes mentoring junior developers, facilitating technical discussion, maintaining good cross team communication, prioritizing tasks and features and presenting new features to stakeholders.

Waterloo, Ontario, Ca

I was involved with customizing aspects of the lock screen, system UI and system services of the BlackBerry Priv.The work involved quickly learning the very large Android source code base, locating the correct locations to make customizations and understanding the impact of any customizations on existing code. Most of the work was in Java, but included some layout design with the Android XML layout language.

Waterloo, Ontario, Ca

I worked as both an architect and developer on the Cascades UI framework for BlackBerry 10 which was a C++/QT based framework for quickly building compelling UI for BlackBerry applications. It was a challenging and exciting job that involved frequent communication and collaboration with architects, stakeholders and development teams located in Sweden, California, and Ontario.Successes included the design of the asset selection mechanism which allowed developers to provide alternate or fallback resources for different device resolutions or color schemes facilitating development for multiple phones as well as the framework for defining and processing keyboard shortcuts.

Waterloo, Ontario, Ca

I was part of the small team that worked on BlackBerry Theme Studio, the most popular developer/designer tool created by BlackBerry. The tool suite consisted of a set of Windows MFC applications, Theme Builder and Composer, which were used for customizing the look and feel of BlackBerry handhelds and creating animated SVG content respectively.My primary focus was the Export framework which converted the information in the UI to a bundle that could be loaded on the device. The bundle included all necessary images, fonts, animations and other information required to apply the unique look and feel to the handset. This included the code that exported SVG files used the home screen, lock screen and call screens of the device.My other focus was on the handheld side of the solution, the reading and mapping of the information in the bundle to the format that the handheld expected. This side was entirely written in Java and working on both sides required me to switch seamlessly between C++ and Java on a regular basis.During this time, I was involved in some performance initiatives to optimize both the parsing of themes on the handheld and the command line tools used by the internal UX designers. Both initiatives met with considerable success and resulted in substantial time savings in each instance.

Waterloo, Ontario, Ca

I was part of the Advanced Graphics team responsible for integrating SVG graphics into the BlackBerry runtime.As part of my role, I enhanced the supported SVG features including transformations, viewbox and their associated animations. I was also responsible for developing first MMS renderer for BlackBerry handhelds.

The Plazmic Media Engine was a Java SVG renderer that fit within 10kb and ran on mobile phones in Japan, the only color phones at the time.In addition to the development work on the media engine, I was responsible for designing the pre-compiled form of SVG used by the renderer.