Alan Cooper

Alan Cooper designs and develops software products (including SuperProject®, MicroPhone II for Windows, and Microsoft's visual programming interface for Visual Basic®). Since he invented the programming language Visual Basic in the 1970s, his goal was to provide easy-to-use software that would focus on the user and his needs. Therefore he founded his company Cooper that consults on the software developing process for big companies. 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 has received several awards for his outstanding work, among them the 'Windows Pioneer Award' that was presented by Bill Gates in 1994 and the 'Software Visionary Award' in 1998.

He is the author of 'About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design' (1995, revised second edition in 2003) and The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity (1999, revised second edition in 2004), both of them introducing techniques for improved interaction design.