While doing some end-of-the-year archiving of old emails, I was startled when I came across some from Jef Raskin, one of the designers of the original Macintosh and author of The Humane Interface. I was surprised because Jef died this February and, although I was sad at the time, I had sort of forgotten about it.
Although I never met Jef, The Humane Interface was the first interaction design book I ever read, and it changed the way I thought about computers. Although I still don’t agree with everything he said/wrote, he made me (and many others) believe that interfaces could be better, that we can think differently about our relationship with the computer. I still believe that, and although Jef is now gone, the work goes on.
See you in 2006.