I’m an interaction and product designer and Bill Moggridge has had indirectly and directly a strong impact on my learning, my practice and my vision of design.

First at the RCA where I discovered interaction design and where he had had a massive influence on the pioneer CRD department.

At the RCA, I met and became very close friends with one of the designers who worked at IDEO Japan at the beginning of the studio. There again Bill had a great influence on the success of the studio.
Also at IDEO where I was doing an internship and met Bill, he made such a great impression on me…

Five years ago I set up my own design studio and my work would have definitely be different without Bill’s influence.

I owe him so much. Merci Bill!

As a young industrial designer working for a firm called ID TWO, Bill asked me one day “Phillip, do you want to design a user interface?” I said that I had never designed for computers before and in fact didn’t even know how to use them very well. He said “Perfect!” and in that instant, my design career switched from plastic to pixels, and the first user interface I worked on was something called MacWrite II.

In this and in many more ways, Bill had a fundamental impact on my professional life and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to know and to work for him. I’ll endeavour to keep passing on the grace, consideration, and spirit of curiosity that were amongst the many things I learnt along the way.

Thank you Bill.

Working with Ettore Sottsass in the 90’s, I had the pleasure to have met allot of fascinating people when they dropped by. Bill Moggridge was one of these people.

He was really someone special and transmitted a sense of wisdom, energy and peace beyond what I considered normal. I can’t put words on it.

Ettore and Bill had a lot to share, to wonder about and to discuss over a drink or dinner, and they shared it with all of those around.
These are the people who tied technology to the human spirit.

They had that everlasting twinkle in the eye that these enlighted guys always for some reason had … they also had a lot of fun, so maybe they are having some of those great times again, together?

I like to imagine so.

Bill was an outspoken advocate for the value of design in everyday life, and both pioneered the concept of “interaction design” and integrated human factors into the design of computer software and hardware. To me, his contribution to design was to make complicated things human, simple and delightful to use. I am not a technological person at heart and do not understand the complexity of how things do what they do, but nothing to me is more delightful than the audible ‘ping’ of my laptop when it boots up to start the day, the way my cursor gently glides over screens lighting the way to the next thing I need to do, the simplicity of text that automatically corrects my dreadful spelling, the way I can shift from program to program effortlessly and complete all of my necessary daily chores with a high degree of precision but also delight. All of this, is largely thanks to Bill.

The precursor the modern laptop, the Grid Compass computer was designed by Bill in 1979, and first sold three years later. The design used a clamshell case (where the screen folds flat to the rest of the computer when closed) which was pioneering at the time, to say the least. Devices such as hard drives and floppy drives could be connected via a port which made it possible to connect multiple devices to the addressable device bus. It weighed 5 kg (11 lb) and was bulky to say the least. The main buyer was the U.S. government. NASA used it on the Space Shuttle during the early 1980s, as it was both powerful and lightweight. The military Special Forces also purchased the machine, as it could be used by paratroopers in combat.

The way we interact with machines was never the same again – suddenly, we were able to move them to fit our needs, not the other way round, suddenly we could have a more intimate relationship with data, not be controlled by it, and suddenly, machines moved with us (into outer space, even!) and fit into our lives in ways that mattered to us. This was and will be Bill’s legacy.

But that is not the story I want to tell. I want to tell a story of something much more personal.

Bill and I went to Japan together when I first joined IDEO, to visit a famous Japanese car manufacturer. I had only recently joined IDEO and Bill had clearly decided to take me under his wing, fondly referring to me as “the Boy,” even though I was in my late thirties at the time. Even though we were jetlagged and running from place to place on a crazy schedule, he kept telling me about a place that I had to see, that it was something I “simply had to experience.” Eventually, after a long day, we jumped into a cab and he took me to his favorite restaurant, an anonymous-looking hole-in-the-wall next to a bookstore in a bland part of Tokyo. It was a shabu-shabu restaurant, a cuisine described by Wikipedia thus:

“Shabu-shabu is a Japanese variant of hot pot. The name shabu-shabu is derived from the “swish swish” sound of cooking the meat in the pot. The dish is related to sukiyaki in style, in that both use thinly sliced meat and vegetables and are usually served with dipping sauces, but it is considered to be more savory and less sweet than sukiyaki. It is considered a winter dish, but is eaten year-round.”

He told the waitress to bring “the Boy” best meat available, and said proudly: “I am so excited for you to try this. Now this is great interaction design.” Over a shared pot of boiling liquid, we swished meat, added vegetables, laughed and tried different combinations as the stock became denser and denser with flavor, eventually adding noodles which we slurped like children and laughed as we spilled it on our shirts. We talked for hours about design, about him founding his business, about me and what I hoped for my career and advice about how to navigate the company I had just joined. It was one of the most significant moments in my career to date, to have someone so selflessly spend time with me, to so clearly enjoy passing on their wisdom and knowledge and to make me, the user, just like he did with his early laptop, feel so completely at the center of the universe. The humble shabu-shabu restaurant is still one of my favorites: I have taken many others there, and always make a beeline for it when I go to Tokyo, and tell whoever I am with this story.

Thanks to Bill, I learned that the value of interaction is much more than buttons on a screen, but it is in fact, human beings spending time with each other, slurping, swishing and laughing.

To Bill.

When Dad received his most recent and most dire diagnosis, he set his normal matter-of-fact self aside for a brief moment and allowed some philosophy to slip in. “Well, I’m almost seventy,” he said to me on the phone, “I’ve managed to get a lot of stuff done.”

At the time that struck me as a remarkably true statement. Such stuff he has gotten done! Laptops unfolded, museums commandeered, beauteous Danes wooed, two sons raised, IDEO’s ideated, innovations innovated, and optimism, positivity and creativity inspirated (I know, not a word, but it SHOULD be).

But when he said that, I don’t think I had any idea (I’m not sure he did either) of just HOW MUCH STUFF he’s gotten done. The outpouring of love and loss over the past week, the culmination of which is this amazing site and all the tributes herein, is the true mark of a man who got more stuff done than even he realized.

Thanks to all. We miss you, Dad.

Tolerating my Tofurkey.

As a young father, husband, and son.

I met Bill through his son Alex; a good friend from college days. I think I first drank beer with Bill at an Irish bar in San Francisco after one of Alex’s plays. When Alex took us to his home in the hills near Palo Alto, it was so beautiful and we were met with such hospitality. I was a fan of modern home design and their home was a testament to thoughtful design. I loved that there were real candles on their Christmas tree (and nothing else if I remember correctly) and Airstream trailers for guest rooms. Everywhere you looked was thoughtful design; what a way to live! Although I only saw him a handful of times, I remember Bill as kind, warm, and witty. We still have a beautiful ax that we got from him at a garage sale before they moved to New York. We will continue to chop wood with it and feel your warmth.

Bill had this incredible way of making every word or phrase sound so delightful. If you couldn’t make a meeting with him he would say, “That’s disappointing!” and every hello, “Well hello there!” He was endlessly charming to say the least.

Back in 2007, a group of us at IDEO were super inspired by an e-card that IDEOer Danny DeRuntz had made. We hacked into it (with his permission, of course) and used Bill’s velvety vocals and Moggridge-isms to narrate every wish: ideo.tv/holiday2007

I had just joined IDEO when I worked with Bill on the UK launch of his book. I remember we were in the midst of the launch preparations running around like crazy, when he suddenly stopped and asked ‘Where were you from again?’ “From the Canaries” “Well, that surely makes you a Canary Bird, right?”

I did not know Bill for long but he somehow made you feel you had known him forever. He truly cared for people and I feel lucky to have met such an incredibly wise and generous person. Bill, we miss you already.