Introduction
William Arthur Stewart "Bill" Buxton (born March 10, 1949) is a Canadian computer scientist and designer. He is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research. He is known for being one of the pioneers in the human–computer interaction field.
Background and contributions
Buxton received his bachelor's degree in music from Queen's University in 1973 and his master's degree in computer science from the University of Toronto in 1978.
Buxton's scientific contributions include applying Fitts' law to human-computer interaction and the invention and analysis of the marking menu (together with Gordon Kurtenbach). He pioneered multi-touch interfaces and music composition tools in the late 1970s, while working in the Dynamic Graphics Project at the University of Toronto. In 2007, he published Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design.
Buxton is a regular columnist at BusinessWeek. Before joining Microsoft Research he was chief scientist at Alias Wavefront and SGI, and a professor at the University of Toronto.
He received the SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 for his many fundamental contributions to the human–computer interaction field.
Notable honors and awards
- Elected to the CHI Academy (2002)
- SIGCHI Lasting Impact Award (2004)
- SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award (2008)
- Doctor of Design Honoris Causa from the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, Ontario (June, 2007)
- Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (2008)
- Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario (June, 2009)
- Doctor of Industrial Design Honoris Causa from the Technical University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands (April, 2010)
- Doctor of Science Honoris Causa from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario (June, 2013)