PCD 2/2/07 Moggridge

Digital technology has changed the way we interact with everything from the games we play to the tools we use at work. Designers of digital technology products no longer regard their job as designing a physical object--beautiful or utilitarian--but as designing our interactions with it. In Designing Interactions, Bill Moggridge introduces us to forty influential designers who have shaped our interaction with technology. Moggridge, designer of the first laptop computer (the GRiD Compass, 1981) and a founder of the design firm IDEO, tells us these stories from an industry insider's viewpoint, tracing the evolution of ideas from inspiration to outcome. The innovators he interviews--including Will Wright, creator of The Sims, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, and Doug Engelbart, Bill Atkinson, and others involved in the invention and development of the mouse and the desktop--have been instrumental in making a difference in the design of interactions. Their stories chart the history of entrepreneurial design development for technology.

Bill Moggridge was a cofounder of IDEO, a firm that helps companies innovate through the design of products, services, environments and digital experiences. Bill founded his design firm in London in 1969, adding a second office in 1979 in Palo Alto, at the heart of California's Silicon Valley. He designed the first laptop computer, the GRiD Compass, and pioneered Interaction Design as a discipline. In 1991 he merged his company with David Kelley and Mike Nuttall to form IDEO, which now has offices in Palo Alto, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, London, Munich and Shanghai. Bill has been active in design education throughout his career, notably as Visiting Professor in Interaction design at the Royal College of Art in London, and Associate Professor in the Design program at Stanford University. He is most interested in what people want, who they are, and how they interact with other people, things and places. His book, Designing Interactions is available from The MIT Press.

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