It’s been a sad and bad year for interaction design losing some of its pioneers. Hillman Curtis, Andy Cameron and now Bill Moggridge, arguably the father of interaction design as a discipline and designer of the world’s first laptop, at just 69.
The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where Bill was Director, has posted a lovely tribute (video embedded below) as well as resources of his talks and books. John Thackara, who has known him for many years, has also posted a nice personal tribute.
I’m particularly sad because Bill was one of the people on my “must meet one day” list, as his work and thoughts fed into many of my own. We were also hoping he would write the foreword to our book on service design, given his early interest and help in developing it and contact with the live|work founders, who appear in his Designing Interactions book. He would have been the man to connect the dots. Any of us working in this area – in design in general – owe him a great deal.