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By Dave Boyce
Almanac Staff Writer

The many factors that go into successful product design, including consideration of the needs and desires of ordinary people, was a life's work for Woodside resident and design pioneer Bill Moggridge. A co-founder of the noted Palo Alto design firm IDEO and the director of the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City, Mr. Moggridge died Saturday, Sept. 8, at the age of 69.

Mr. Moggridge was born in London in 1943 and graduated from the Central School of Design there, according to a Cooper-Hewitt bio. As an active designer over 20 years, he is well known for the GRiD Compass, considered the first laptop computer, but his early designs included a toaster and a microscope. In the 1970s, working mostly in Europe, his work included varieties of telephones for six countries, a telephone answering machine in Italy, and a marine radio in Sweden, according to "It's Getting So Complicated," his 2008 white paper.

In that white paper, Mr. Moggridge addressed the notion of designing for a planet in the crisis of climate change. Included among the projects he mentions are Tangible Earth, an interactive touchable globe that depicts global phenomena such as weather, animal migrations, air pollution and the warming of the oceans.

In 1991, Mr. Moggridge, with David Kelley and Mike Nuttall, co-founded IDEO, "an award-winning global design firm that takes a human-centered, design-based approach to helping organizations in the public and private sectors innovate and grow." The company's list of products is notable for its breadth and depth.

If Mr. Moggridge's views came to be a touchstone in the field of good design, he was active in developing other touchstones. His book Designing Interactions includes interviews with 37 notable people in the field, including Doug Engelbart, who invented the mouse; Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page; Electronic Arts co-founder Bing Gordon; and Brenda Laurel, a designer of video games for girls.

The design community recognized him many times. Among his British awards are the Royal Designer for Industry in 1988 and Prince Philip Designer's Prize in 2010, according to the bio. The Cooper-Hewitt museum awarded him its National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2009. His career included lecturing in design at the London Business School, and membership on the steering committee for the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy. More recently, he was a consulting professor in the Joint Program in Design at Stanford University.

Mr. Moggridge is survived by his wife of 47 years, Karin, and two sons, Alex and Erik.

Click here to see a video about Mr. Moggridge.

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