Hugh Dubberly

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Hugh Dubberly
Education
OccupationsDesigner, design theorist, educator
Known forCo-creator of Knowledge Navigator
Design theory and systems thinking
Website dubberly.com

Hugh Dubberly is an American designer, design theorist, and educator known for his work in interaction design, systems thinking, and design education. [1] He held leadership positions at Apple Computer and Netscape, founded the design consultancy Dubberly Design Office, and has taught at multiple universities. [2] He was inducted into the CHI Academy in 2012 [3] and named an AIGA Fellow in 2018. [4]

Contents

Education and early career

Dubberly earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1981 and a Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Yale University in 1983. [5] At Yale, his faculty included Paul Rand, Alvin Eisenman, Armin Hofmann, and Matthew Carter. [4]

Following graduate school, he worked as Design Director at Wang Laboratories. [4]

Career

Apple Computer (1986–1994)

Dubberly joined Apple Computer in 1986 as Creative Director, managing graphic design and corporate identity. [5] He co-created the Knowledge Navigator (1987) [6] , a technology-forecast video depicting a tablet computer with voice assistant and touchscreen interface. [7] [8]

During his tenure at Apple, Dubberly also served as founding chairman of the Computer Graphics Department at Art Center College of Design. [9] [4]

Netscape (1995–2000)

After a brief period as Director of Interface Design at Times Mirror Company, Dubberly joined Netscape as Vice President of Design in 1995. [1] [5] [2] At Netscape, he managed teams responsible for the company's web presence and portal development during the early commercial Internet era. [5]

Dubberly Design Office (2000–present)

In 2000, Dubberly founded Dubberly Design Office in San Francisco, a consultancy focusing on interaction design, information design, and systems design. [5] The firm's clients have included Amazon, Cisco, Facebook, GE, Google, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, and Samsung. [10]

Academic work

Dubberly has taught design at multiple universities, including:

Publications

Dubberly has published more than 50 articles on design methods and edited the "On Modeling" column for ACM Interactions magazine. [13]

Notable publications include:

Design theory contributions

Dubberly's theoretical work focuses on applying systems thinking and cybernetics to design practice. [17] His central focus is on making complex ideas visible and understandable through models and diagrams. [1] He has advocated that model-building should be a core competency for designers, arguing that explicit, visible models help teams share knowledge and improve products. [1]

He has published extensively on design process models and has collaborated with cybernetician Paul Pangaro on articles exploring conversation theory and goal-directed behavior in designed systems. [18]

Awards and recognition

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Brown, David R. (2000). "Supermodeler Hugh Dubberly". Gain: AIGA Journal of Design for the Network Economy. 1 (1). AIGA: 1–7.
  2. 1 2 3 "Hugh Dubberly". AIGA San Francisco. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  3. 1 2 "Award Recipients". ACM SIGCHI. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Chuck Byrne Interviews Hugh Dubberly: Fellows Series". AIGA San Francisco. 2018. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Hugh Dubberly". UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  6. ↑ "Apple's 1987 Knowledge Navigator video depicted a future that's still a work in progress". Fast Company. 2023-07-14. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  7. ↑ Mui, Chunka. "How Apple Invented The Future (and the iPad) in 1986". Forbes.
  8. ↑ Markoff, John (June 14, 2019). "Stanford Team Aims at Alexa and Siri With a Privacy-Minded Alternative". The New York Times. Retrieved April 8, 2024.
  9. ↑ "News Around Campus". Gateway. Vol. 2. Brooklyn, New York: Pratt Institute Office of Communications. September 1991 – July 1992. Retrieved 2026-01-16– via JSTOR.
  10. ↑ "About". Dubberly Design Office. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  11. ↑ "Human-Computer Interaction Institute". Carnegie Mellon University. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  12. ↑ "Hugh Dubberly". Rosenfeld Media. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  13. ↑ "Hugh Dubberly". ACM Digital Library. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  14. ↑ "How do you design?". Dubberly Design Office. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  15. ↑ Rith, Chanpory; Dubberly, Hugh (2007). "Why Horst W.J. Rittel Matters". Design Issues. 23 (1): 72–74. doi:10.1162/desi.2007.23.1.72.
  16. ↑ Davis, Meredith; Dubberly, Hugh (2023). "Rethinking Design Education". She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation. 9 (3).
  17. ↑ "Hugh Dubberly on design as finding balance in systems". Medium. 2023. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  18. ↑ Dubberly, Hugh; Pangaro, Paul; Haque, Usman (2009). "What is interaction? Are there different types?". Interactions. 16 (1): 69–75. doi:10.1145/1456202.1456220.
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