An Interaction Designer's Thanksgiving

It's American Thanksgiving today, and interaction designers have much to be thankful for.

Thank you, PARC's Bob Taylor, for realizing twenty years before the rest of the world did, that the computer is a communication device.

Thank you, Henry Dreyfuss and Raymond Lowey, for giving us design heroes to emulate.

Thank you, Larry Tesler, for cut and paste. Paste is still the #1 interaction design command and you don't realize how much you miss this dynamic duo until it is gone (see: iPhone).

Thank you, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, for creating the TCP/IP protocol which makes so much of the internet magic possible.

Thank you, Nintendo, for the Wii, which showed everyone the joy that is gaming in real space with natural gestures.

Likewise, thank you Apple, for the willpower to design great products with tiny touchscreens. Desire is a powerful tool to wield.

Thank you, Adobe, Apple, Omnigraffle, and, yes, Microsoft, for tirelessly working to improve the tools we use to create our products.

Thank you, Intel and AMD, for constantly applying Moore's Law to make microprocessors faster. The future of interaction design rests on you.

Thank you, IxDA, for creating a home for people who do what we do.

Thank you to the developers and the visual and industrial designers who make our work the best it can be. We can't do it without you.

And thanks for other designers who inspire and delight me with your work and ideas.

Thanks, too, for the clients who fund and fuel our work and who bring their expertise to bear. As Tibor Kalman noted, the best clients are those who are smarter than you.

And, of course, thank you to the users, those who live with our products every day and suffer through our faults and failings as human designers. May they--and us all--have a wonderful day of Thanksgiving.

Originally posted at Thursday, November 22, 2007 | Comments (3) | Trackback (0)