Bill Moggridge

Bill Moggridge
Bill Moggridge at CIID in June 2010
Born	William Grant Moggridge (1943-06-25)25 June 1943 London, England
Died	8 September 2012(2012-09-08) (aged 69) San Francisco, California, US
Cause of death	Cancer
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design
Occupation	Director, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Cofounder and Fellow, IDEO
Years active	1965–2012
Spouse(s)	Karin Moggridge
Children	Alex Moggridge Erik Moggridge

William Grant "Bill" Moggridge, RDI (25 June 1943 – 8 September 2012) was a British 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 pioneer in adopting a human-centred approach in design, and championed interaction design as a mainstream design discipline (he is given credit for coining the term). Among his achievements, he designed the first laptop computer, the GRiD Compass, was honoured for Lifetime Achievement from the National Design Awards, and given the Prince Philip Designers Prize. He was quoted as saying, "If there is a simple, easy principle that binds everything I have done together, it is my interest in people and their relationship to things."

Moggridge studied industrial design from 1962 to 1965 at the Central School of Art and Design, London, in 1965, he went to the US to find opportunities as a designer and landed his first job as a designer for the American Sterilizer Co. in Erie, Pennsylvania, designing hospital equipment. In 1969, Moggridge returned to London to study typography and communications.

In 1969 in London, Moggridge founded his first company, Moggridge Associates, in the top floor of his home. His first industrial design to reach the market was a toaster for Hoover UK. In 1972, he worked on his first computer project, a Mini Computer for Computer Technology Ltd, UK, that was not produced. In 1973, another Hoover UK design, for a space heater, got on the cover of a UK design magazine.

Moggridge returned to the US in 1979 to open another office, called ID Two, first located in Palo Alto, California. An early client was GRiD Systems, for whom he designed what is widely regarded as the first laptop computer, the GRiD Compass. This was the first portable computer with a display that closed over the keyboard, a patented innovation that GRiD licensed for many years. It retailed at $8,150 (£5,097) and flew on board every Space Shuttle mission from 1983 to 1997.