Bill Verplank

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Bill Verplank giving a lecture at CIID in July 2010 Billverplank ciid 2010.jpg
Bill Verplank giving a lecture at CIID in July 2010

William "Bill" Lawrence Verplank is a designer and researcher who focuses on interactions between humans and computers. He is one of the pioneers of interaction design, a field of design that focuses on users and technology, and a term he helped coin in the 1980s. [1] [2] He was previously a visiting scholar at Stanford University's CCRMA and was involved in Stanford's d.school. [3] He also teaches and lectures internationally on interaction design.

Contents

Career

Bill Verplank received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 1965. [4] Verplank then moved the same year to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to complete a PhD by 1977 in man-machine systems and studied with Thomas B. Sheridan. [5]

He worked at Xerox Parc and Office Systems Divisions from 1978-1986 refining the design of the original graphical user interface and mouse, in the Xerox Star. He went on to work with Bill Moggridge, first at IDtwo and then at IDEO (1986–1992), bringing graphical user interfaces to the world of product design. Together with Bill Moggridge, they coined the term interaction design in the mid-1980s. [2]

From 1992-2000 at Interval Research Corporation, he directed the design and research for collaboration, tangibility and music. [6] When Interval Research closed in 2000, Verplank joined Stanford's University's CCRMA part-time with Max Mathews and developed a course on HCI for computer music and a conference (spun off from CHI) called NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression). [6] He was on the steering committee and taught at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (2000–2005). [7]

He is active in SIGCHI, a special interest group which is focused on human–computer interactions (HCI) and he helped write their curricula for the SIGCHI Academy. [6]

An interview with Verplank, featuring his signature sketching while talking, is included in the book Designing Interactions (published in October 2006), with the e-book and website of the same publication including a video of Verplank. [8]

Related Research Articles

Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." While interaction design has an interest in form, its main area of focus rests on behavior. Rather than analyzing how things are, interaction design synthesizes and imagines things as they could be. This element of interaction design is what characterizes IxD as a design field, as opposed to a science or engineering field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WIMP (computing)</span> Style of human-computer interaction

In human–computer interaction, WIMP stands for "windows, icons, menus, pointer", denoting a style of interaction using these elements of the user interface. Other expansions are sometimes used, such as substituting "mouse" and "mice" for menus, or "pull-down menu" and "pointing" for pointer.

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Lawrence Gordon Tesler was an American computer scientist who worked in the field of human–computer interaction. Tesler worked at Xerox PARC, Apple, Amazon, and Yahoo!

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Moggridge</span>

William Grant Moggridge, RDI was an English designer, author and educator who cofounded the design company IDEO and was director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. He was a pioneer in adopting a human-centred approach in design, and championed interaction design as a mainstream design discipline. Among his achievements, he designed the first laptop computer, the GRiD Compass, was honoured for Lifetime Achievement from the National Design Awards, and given the Prince Philip Designers Prize. He was quoted as saying, "If there is a simple, easy principle that binds everything I have done together, it is my interest in people and their relationship to things."

Stuart K. Card, an American researcher and retired senior research fellow at Xerox PARC, is considered to be one of the pioneers of applying human factors in human–computer interaction. With Jock D. Mackinlay, George G. Robertson and others he invented a number of Information Visualization techniques. He holds numerous patents in user interfaces and visual analysis.

The Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is one of the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest groups which is focused on human–computer interactions (HCI).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Buxton</span> Canadian computer scientist and designer (born 1949)

William Arthur Stewart Buxton is a Canadian computer scientist and designer. He is a partner researcher at Microsoft Research. He is known for being one of the pioneers in the human–computer interaction field.

Jock D. Mackinlay is an American information visualization expert and Vice President of Research and Design at Tableau Software. With Stuart Card, George G. Robertson and others he invented a number of information visualization techniques.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human–computer interaction</span> Academic discipline studying the relationship between computer systems and their users

Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design technologies that allow humans to interact with computers in novel ways. A device that allows interaction between human being and a computer is known as a "Human-computer Interface (HCI)".

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William Maxwell Newman was a British computer scientist. With others at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s Newman demonstrated the advantages of the raster display technology first deployed in the Xerox Alto personal workstation, developing interactive programs for producing illustrations and drawings. With Bob Sproull he co-authored the first major textbook on interactive computer graphics.

Yvonne Rogers is a British psychologist and computer scientist. She serves as director of the Interaction Centre at University College London. She has authored or contributed to more than 250 publications. Her book Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction written with Jenny Preece and Helen Sharp has sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide and has been translated into six other languages. Her work is described in Encounters with HCI Pioneers: A Personal History and Photo Journal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Mackay</span> Computer Scientist

Wendy Elizabeth Mackay is a Canadian researcher specializing in human-computer interaction. She has served in all of the roles on the SIGCHI committee, including Chair. She is a member of the CHI Academy and a recipient of a European Research Council Advanced grant. She has been a visiting professor in Stanford University between 2010 and 2012, and received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award in 2014.

Joëlle Coutaz is a French computer scientist, specializing in human-computer interaction (HCI). Her career includes research in the fields of operating systems and HCI, as well as being a professor at the University of Grenoble. Coutaz is considered a pioneer in HCI in France, and in 2007, she was awarded membership to SIGCHI. She was also involved in organizing CHI conferences and was a member on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.

Sharon Oviatt is an internationally recognized computer scientist, professor and researcher known for her work in the field of human–computer interaction on human-centered multimodal interface design and evaluation.

Andrew Cockburn is currently working as a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He is in charge of the Human Computer Interactions Lab where he conducts research focused on designing and testing user interfaces that integrate with inherent human factors.

Susanne Bødker is a Danish computer scientist known for her contributions to human–computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, and participatory design, including the introduction of activity theory to human–computer interaction. She is a professor of computer science at Aarhus University, and a member of the CHI Academy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shumin Zhai</span> Human–computer interaction research scientist

Shumin Zhai is a Chinese-born American Canadian Human–computer interaction (HCI) research scientist and inventor. He is known for his research specifically on input devices and interaction methods, swipe-gesture-based touchscreen keyboards, eye-tracking interfaces, and models of human performance in human-computer interaction. His studies have contributed to both foundational models and understandings of HCI and practical user interface designs and flagship products. He previously worked at IBM where he invented the ShapeWriter text entry method for smartphones, which is a predecessor to the modern Swype keyboard. Dr. Zhai's publications have won the ACM UIST Lasting Impact Award and the IEEE Computer Society Best Paper Award, among others, and he is most known for his research specifically on input devices and interaction methods, swipe-gesture-based touchscreen keyboards, eye-tracking interfaces, and models of human performance in human-computer interaction. Dr. Zhai is currently a Principal Scientist at Google where he leads and directs research, design, and development of human-device input methods and haptics systems.

References

  1. Quito, Anne (2015-06-01). "Google's moronic portrayal of designers is no laughing matter — Quartz". qz.com. Retrieved 2018-10-26. History check: Material Design is essentially a facet of interaction design, a specialization concerned with the user's behavior and well established since the 1980s by pioneers like Bill Moggridge and Bill Verplank.
  2. 1 2 Friesen, Jeff (2013-03-06). "Design patterns, the big picture, Part 3: Beyond software design patterns". JavaWorld. IDG Communications, Inc. Retrieved 2018-10-26. In the mid-1980s, human-computer interaction pioneers Bill Moggridge and Bill Verplank coined the term interaction design.
  3. "Bill Verplank". CCRMA, Stanford University. Retrieved 2018-10-26.
  4. "The Stanford Daily 12 May 1965 — The Stanford Daily". stanforddailyarchive.com. Retrieved 2018-10-28.
  5. Hummels, Caroline. "Bill Verplank | Engaging Encounters: sketching futures together". dqi.id.tue.nl. Archived from the original on 2018-10-27. Retrieved 2018-10-26.
  6. 1 2 3 "2015 SIGCHI Awards". ACM SIGCHI. Retrieved 2018-10-26.
  7. Bill Verplank home site
  8. Crampton Smith, Gillian; Moggridge, Bill (2006). "Designing Interactions". www.designinginteractions.com. Retrieved 2016-07-28.