Alan Cooper

Alan Cooper is designing and developing software products (including SuperProject®, MicroPhone II for Windows, and Microsoft's visual programming interface for Visual Basic®). Since inventing the programming language Visual Basic in the 1970s, the goal of his work was to program easy-to-use software that would focus on the user and his needs. Therefore, he founded his company [http:www.cooper.com|Cooper] that is consulting big companies in their software developing process. Cooper uses the concept of Goal-Directed Design® to provide solutions for companies such as Dolby, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Logitech, Microsoft, SAP, Sony and VISA.

Alan Cooper received several awards for his outstandung work, among them the 'Windows Pioneer Award' that was presented by Bill Gates in 1994 and the 'Software Visionary Award' that he received in 1998.

He is author of 'About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design' (1995, revised second edition in 2003) and The Inmates are Running the Asylum (1999, revised second edition in 2004), both of them introducing techniques for better interaction design.