William 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." While interaction design has an interest in form (similar to other design fields), its main area of foc ...

, 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 Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

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) to complete a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

by 1977 in man-machine systems and studied with

Thomas B. Sheridan Thomas B. Sheridan (born December 23, 1929) is an 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 an ...

. He worked at

Xerox Parc Future Concepts division (formerly Palo Alto Research Center, PARC and Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, as a div ...

and Office Systems Divisions from 1978-1986 refining the design of the original graphical user interface and mouse, in the

Xerox Star The Xerox Star workstation, officially named Xerox Star 8010 Information System, is the first commercial personal computer to incorporate technologies that have since become standard in personal computers, including a bitmapped display, a window- ...

. He went on to work with

Bill Moggridge William Grant Moggridge, Royal Designer for Industry, RDI (25 June 1943 – 8 September 2012) was an English designer, author and educator who cofounded the design company IDEO and was director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum i ...

, first at IDtwo and then at

IDEO IDEO () is a design firm, design and consulting firm with offices in the U.S., England, and China. It was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1991. The company's 500 staff uses a design thinking approach to design products, services, environmen ...

(1986–1992), bringing graphical user interfaces to the world of product design. Together with Bill Moggridge, they coined the term

in the mid-1980s. From 1992-2000 at

Interval Research Corporation Interval Research Corporation was founded in 1992 by Paul Allen and David Liddle. It was a Palo Alto laboratory and technology incubator focusing on consumer product applications and services with a focus on the Internet. A 1997 version of the ...

, 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 – April 21, 2011) was an American pioneer of computer music. Biography Max Vernon Mathews was born in Columbus, Nebraska, to two science schoolteachers. His father in particular taught physics, chemistry ...

and developed a course on HCI for computer music and a conference (spun off from CHI) called

NIME New Interfaces for Musical Expression, also known as NIME, is an international conference dedicated to scientific research on the development of new technologies and their role in musical expression and artistic performance. History The confer ...

(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 between 2001 and 2006. The institute was based in ...

(2000–2005). He is active in

SIGCHI 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). It hosts the flagship annual international H ...

, 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'' (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 (born December 8, 1960) 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, 201 ...

{{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