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 Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." Beyond the digital aspect, interaction design is also useful when creating physical (non-digital) produ ...

, a field of design that focuses on users and technology, and a term he helped coin in the 1980s. He was previously a visiting scholar at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

CCRMA Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...

and was involved in Stanford's d.school. He also teaches and lectures internationally on interaction design.

Career

Bill Verplank received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from

in 1965. Verplank then moved the same year to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in order to complete a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

by 1977 in man-machine systems and studied with

Thomas B. Sheridan Thomas B. Sheridan (born December 23, 1929) is American professor of mechanical engineering and Applied Psychology Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a pioneer of robotics and remote control technology. Early life and e ...

. He worked at

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...

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 William Grant Moggridge, RDI (25 June 1943 – 8 September 2012) was an English designer, author and educator who cofounded the design company IDEO and was director of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York. He was a pionee ...

, they coined the term

in the mid-1980s. From 1992-2000 at Interval Research Corporation, he directed the design and research for collaboration, tangibility and music. When Interval Research closed in 2000, Verplank joined Stanford's University's CCRMA part-time with

Max Mathews Max Vernon Mathews (November 13, 1926 in Columbus, Nebraska, USA – April 21, 2011 in San Francisco, CA, USA) was a pioneer of computer music. Biography Mathews studied electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology and the Ma ...

and developed a course on HCI for computer music and a conference (spun off from CHI) called NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression). He was on the steering committee and taught at the

Interaction Design Institute Ivrea Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (also known as Interaction Ivrea or IDII) was a two-year graduate program in the field of Interaction Design operating in the town of Ivrea, in Northern Italy. It was based in the former Olivetti Study and Rese ...

(2000–2005). 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. An interview with Verplank, featuring his signature sketching while talking, is included in the book ''

Designing Interactions A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

'' (published in October 2006), with the e-book and website of the same publication including a video of Verplank.

References

External links

* Podcast
The History of Interaction with Bill Verplank
on The SpoolCast (Episode #58, 2008) with

Jared Spool Jared Spool is an American writer, researcher, speaker, educator, and an expert on the subjects of usability, software, design, and research.Ward, Mark"The long and winding road of e-commerce" ''BBC News'', November 18, 2011. Retrieved December 7, ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Verplank, Bill Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Stanford University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Stanford University faculty Human–computer interaction researchers