Eleanor Gibson

Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk publish work in Scientific American exploring the concepts of Affordance.

Margaret Mead

The famed anthropologist Margaret Mead coined the contemporary term ‘Semiotics’ and it’s use as a noun in 1962

Mabel Addis

Mabel Addis creates the Sumerian Game. She writes the narrative and designs the interactions for the first text based interactive computer game for students.

Stephanie Rosenbaum

Stephanie Rosenbaum founded TecEd in 1967, making it one of the oldest consultancies focused on user experience and usability.

Doug Englebart and team at SRI gives the mother of all demos—showcasing the mouse and hypertext

ARPAnet comes online

Xerox PARC formed

Xerox PARC given charter to develop “architecture of information“ leading to many HCI conventions

Elizabeth Feinler

Elizabeth “Jake“ Feinler lead the team at SRI that created WhoIs and the DNS framework.

Muriel Cooper

Muriel Cooper cofounds the Visual Language Workshop

Cut and Paste invented at Xerox PARC

Apple Computer founded

Brenda Laurel

Brenda Laurel works for CyberVision creating video games

The term Information Architecture is coined by Richard Saul Wurman

Apple II is released

Terry Roberts

Terry Roberts starts work on her PhD at Stanford and doing research at Xerox PARC

Joy Mountford

Joy Mountford begins working on complex interactions—speech recognition, heads up displays—for Honeywell on high-speed tactical aircraft

Patricia Moore

Spent a year, starting in 1979, disguised as an 85 year old woman & traveling around the United States and Canada to understand how the elderly manage in their daily lives.

ITP created at NYU

UseNet created

BBSes and Online services become available

Brenda Laurel

Brenda Laurel produces games at Atari

Carole Bilson

Joins Kodak as an Industrial Designer. During her tenure she will create the 1st African American community, a Women’s support community, run 8 film camera programs and run the Picture Maker system program, bringing in billions to the company.

Terry Roberts

Finishes her dissertation and begins working in the product group at Xerox, working on the Star system

Kristina Hooper Woolsey

Kristina Hooper Woolsey becomes the director of the Atari Research Labs

Liz Sanders

Joins Fitch in 1981 as the first psychologist hired in a design agency to lead research.

ACM SIGSOC holds a conference on HCI

Annette Wagner

Annette Wagner designed fonts, icons and UI for the original Apple Lisa computer

Lorraine Borman

Lorraine Borman cofounds and is the first chair (president) of SIGCHI (The Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction) which is part of the ACM – (Association for Computing Machinery).

Adele Goldberg

Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal coin the term “Pixel Art“ to describe working with 8-bit, pixelated artwork.

Mary Dieli

Mary Dieli helps design the Lisa Operating system for Apple.

Ellen Nold

Ellen Nold launched the first usability program at Apple in 1981, setting up the first usability lab in 1982.

Goldie “Red“ Burns

Goldie “Red“ Burns was known as the Godmother of Silicon Alley (New York City’s version of Silicon Valley) and she ran NYU’s Interaction Telecommunications Program for 28 years. She mentored a couple of generations of talent through the program

Susan Kare

Susan Kare begins working at Apple designing icons in pixelated form

ARPANet computers switch to TCP/IP

Microsoft Word released

Muriel Cooper

Muriel Cooper cofounds the MIT Media Lab with Nicholas Negroponte. The VLW becomes part of the Lab.

Elizabeth Feinler

Elizabeth Feinler and her team at SRI create the DNS system to allow human friendly organization of the internet

Apple releases first Macintosh

Bonnie John

Bonnie John opens the first user studies laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University

Ginny Redish

Ginny Redish is known as the mother of Usability – she set up one of the first independent usability test laboratories in the US.

Sue Booker

Joins ID Two as their first Interaction Designer.

Joy Mountford

Joy Mountford began leading the Human Interface group at Apple Computer in 1986. She helped invent Quicktime video and the group was responsible for setting the user interface guidelines across all Apple products.

Sylvia Harris

Sylvia Harris works with Citibank IXD lead Valerie Fenster on ATM design

Valerie Fenster

Joins Citibank as the lead interaction design working on all product design on their ATMs.

Colleen Bushell

Colleen Bushell joins the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) group bringing graphic design and data visualization skills to the team

Jane Fulton Suri

Jane Fulton Suri hired by Bill Moggridge and later becomes Executive Design Director of IDEO

Lucy Suchman

Lucy Suchman brings the concept of “situated action“ to goal-driven field observation in HCI

Kristina Hooper Woolsey

Kristina Hooper Woolsey becomes the director of the Apple Multimedia Labs

Sue Booker

Joins Apple to work on the Newton. She is the lead Interaction Designer on the project.

Hypercard released by Apple—giving designers the ability to design interactive tools

Brenda Laurel

Brenda Laurel cofounds the Game Developers Conference in 1988.

Abbe Don

Abbe Don joins the Human Interface Group at Apple as an Interaction Designer while still attending ITP/NYU. She continues after graduating.

Dame Wendy Hall

Dame Wendy Hall creates an early hypertext system called Microcosm years before the creation of the World Wide Web.

Mary Dieli

Mary Dieli establishes two usability labs at Microsoft Corp.

Kristee Kreitman Rosendahl

Kristee Kreitman Rosendahl led the UI design for all the multimedia titles in Apple’s Multimedia Lab

Kathy Hemenway

Kathy Hemenway cofounds and becomes the first chair (president) of BayCHI in 1989- the Bay Area’s local chapter of CHI (Computer Human Interaction).

Joy Mountford

Joy Mountford founds the Design Expo—a long running student Interaction Design challenge

Stacy Horn

Stacy Horn creates ECHO, an East Coast Hang Out BBS — the anti-WELL

Gillian Crampton Smith

Gillian Crampton Smith founds the Computer-related Design MA at Royal College of Art

Kristina Hooper Woolsey

Kristina Hooper Woolsey is known as the “mother of multimedia“ for her pioneering work at the Apple Multimedia Lab and Atari Research Labs

Virginia Howlett

Virginia Howlett led the interface design for Windows 3.0 after writing a letter to Bill Gates telling him that he needed to hire real graphic designers to lead the interface design of Windows.

Kathleen Potosnak

Kathleen Potosnak founded the first usability lab at Aldus Corporation.

Janice James

Janice James cofounds and becomes the first president of UPA in 1991 (Usability Professionals Association) which was later named UXPA (2012).

Muriel Cooper

Muriel Cooper is the only female tenured professor in the MIT Media Lab

Sylvia Harris

Sylvia Harris and her team work with Valerie Fenster at Citibank to design the first ADA compliant ATM

Colleen Bushell

Colleen Bushell designs the UI for the first Mosaic browser

Loretta Staples

Loretta Staples pioneers UI design, consulting for companies like Apple, Sony, HP and Getty among others.

Carolina Cruz-Neira

Carolina Cruz-Neira coinvents CAVE and CAVELibs, a VR system, which premiered at SIGGRAPH in 1992

Bonnie John

Bonnie John offers the first course in Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University

Lillian Svec

Lillian Svec creates the Information Architecture practice at Clement Mok Designs

Muriel Cooper

Muriel Cooper presents the Information Landscape demonstration at TED in Monterrey

Muriel Cooper

Muriel Cooper dies

Terry Swack

Terry Swack founds and is VP of the Webmasters’ Guild (now the Association of Internet Professionals)

Julia Whitney

Julia Whitney becomes Director of Interactive Design at WGBH—the famed public television station in Boston

Brenda Laurel

Brenda Laurel, with Rachel Strickland, creates the Placeholder installation at Banff Center for the Arts exploring VR and separation of gaze from direction of movement

Virginia Howlett

Virginia Howlett led the design of Windows 95, the most heavily user tested product in the company’s history

Erin Malone

Erin Malone begins working at Adobe on their first website

Aliza Sherman

Aliza Sherman founds Webgrrls International—one of first women’s global Internet networking organization that grew to over 100 chapters worldwide and over 30,000 participants on nearly 200 listservs

Lillian Svec

Lillian Svec becomes Creative Director & Information Architecture Practice Lead at Studio Archetype

Cynthia Waddell

Dr. Cynthia Waddell published one of the earliest web design accessibility standards guide for the City of San Jose’s Office of Equality Assurance.

Mary Dieli

Mary Dieli is the lead user researcher for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, working with Virginia Howlett.

Brenda Laurel

Brenda Laurel creates the first company specializing in video games for girls after conducting years of gender & technology research.

Irene Au

Irene Au is the first Interaction Designer hired on Netscape applications (Mail, Calendar, etc)

Pamela Mead

Pamela Mead is a UI pioneer, managing user interface design and strategy at MetaDesign, in SF.

Anita Brown

Created Black Geeks to help bring technology to the black community—teaching HTML, web design and other internet skills

Jennifer Niederst

Jennifer Niederst writes Designing for the Web, one of the first books about web design ever published.

Terry Swack

Terry Swack cofounds the AIGA Experience Design special interest group. Events run until 2007.

Jenifer Tidwell

Jenifer Tidwell presents her thesis paper at PLoP about Interaction Design patterns and creating libraries for Interaction Designers.

Maria Giudice

Maria Giudice founds Hot Studio

Irene Au

Irene Au is the first Interaction Designer ever hired atYahoo!

Karen Holtzblatt

Karen Holtzblatt invents the technique of Contextual Inquiry as a user-centered design research method

Lillian Svec

Lillian Svec leads the global practice of Information Architecture at Sapient

Lisa Strausfeld

Lisa Strausfeld becomes Vice President of Quokka Labs at Quokka Sports

Lisa Malmud Beaudoin

Lisa Malmud Beaudoin becomes Vice President and Creative Director for AOL

Meg Hourihan

Meg Hourihan and Evan Williams release the first version of Blogger

Donna Williams

Donna Williams and Adam Powell launch Neopets

Darcy DiNucci

Darcy DiNucci coins the term Web 2.0, but it takes about 5 more years for more robust interactivity on the web to become a reality

Sylvia Harris

Sylvia Harris is Creative Director for the 2000 U.S. Census design. Harris used user-centered design processes and methods to design and test the materials created for the Census. Return rates increased for the first time in 30 years.

Dori Tunstall

Dori Tunstall serves as Director of Design for Democracy, through AIGA, to help set national design guidelines for ballots and polling places

Carole Bilson

Joins Pitney Bowes. Becomes VP Global Design and Usability, runs teams that amass over 49 patents and international design awards.

Christina Wodtke

Christina Wodtke founds Boxes and Arrows, the first online journal for information architect and interaction design practitioners.

Gillian Crampton-Smith

Gillian Crampton-Smith founds the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy. Funded by Olivetti, the Institute ran from 2001 – 2005 before shutting it’s doors.

Brenda Laurel

Brenda Laurel designs and leads the graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design from 2001 – 2006.

Mena Trott

Mena Trott cofounds Six Apart, the parent company of Moveable Type the blogging platform, with her husband Ben. She was known as the mother of blogging at the time.

Janice Fraser

Janice Fraser is one of the founding partners (there were seven) of the UX firm Adaptive Path, serving as it’s first CEO and then on the firm’s Board of Directors.

Indi Young

Indi Young was one of the founding partners (there were seven) of the UX firm Adaptive Path.

Erin Malone

Erin Malone is founding Editor in Chief of Boxes and Arrows

Christina Wodtke, Erin Malone & Lisa Chan

Christina Wodtke, Erin Malone & Lisa Chan are founding members of the Asilomar Institute of Information Architecture, which became the IA Institute in 2005.

Lisa Strausfeld

Lisa Strausfeld becomes a Partner at Pentagram

Christina Wodtke

Christina Wodtke is the first president of the IA institute

Erin Malone

Erin Malone starts working at Yahoo! and founds the Yahoo! Pattern Library—the first corporate pattern library published to the public.

Catarina Fake

Flickr launches – founded by Catarina Fake and Stewart Butterfield

Pamela Mead

Pamela Mead is defining and prototyping mobile interaction design experiences for Palm and then Yahoo!

Pabini Gabriel-Petit

Pabini Gabriel-Petit founds UX Matters online magazine.

Pabini Gabriel-Petit

Pabini Gabriel-Petit is a founding board member of the IXDA.

Lisa deBettencourt, Lada Gorlenko and Carrie Ritch

Lisa deBettencourt, Lada Gorlenko and Carrie Ritch ware founding members of the IXDA.

Jenifer Tidwell

Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell, the first collection of Interaction Design patterns published by O’Reilly Media

Jane Fulton Suri

Jane Fulton Suri publishes Thoughtless Acts? and brings design research into the foreground of the design process

danah boyd

danah boyd participates in a 3 year study, funded by the MacArthur Foundation and led by Mimi Ito to study youth’s use of technology

Brenda Laurel

Brenda Laurel is the founding Chair of the Graduate Program in Design at the California College of the Arts. She is Chair until 2012.

Rashmi Sinha

Rashmi Sinha cofounds the presentation sharing community tool SlideShare. It was later purchased by LinkedIn and integrated into that service.

Holly Liu

Holly Liu cofounds the mobile gaming company Kabam. She is also lead designer of their flagship game Kingdoms of Camelot and its extension Battle for the North.

Gillian Crampton-Smith

Gillian Crampton-Smith founds and the Interaction Design Programme at Iuav University of Venice from 2006-2014, after the closure of the Interaction Institute Ivrea.

Simona Maschi

Simona Maschi cofounds the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. She continues to serve as it’s Director.

Carolina Leslie

Carolina Leslie coordinates the first Brazilian Information Architecture and User Experience conference

Liz Danzico

Liz Danzico becomes Editor in Chief of Boxes and Arrows

Doreen Lorenzo

Doreen Lorenzo becomes President of Frog Design

Liz Danzico

Liz Danzico cofounds the MFA Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts and serves as Chair of the program.

George Oates

George Oates creates The Commons project at flickr, which brought catalogs of images from the Library of Congress first and then other museums onto the service without copyright restrictions.

Indi Young

Indi Young pioneers the Mental Model mapping process as part of user centered research. She authors the first book for Rosenfeld Media on the topic.

Dori Tunstall

Dori Tunstall convenes a National Design Policy Summit in Washington, DC to package and deliver coherent imperatives to members of congress. The goals, to make design a federal priority.

Alexa Andrzejewski

Alexa Andrzejewski founds Foodspotting and is the CEO until it is acquired by OpenTable

Amy Thibodeau

Amy Thibodeau co-founds Ignite London

danah boyd

danah boyd is named one of the most influential women in technology by Fast Company

Jennifer Bove

Jennifer Bove cofounds the Annual Interaction Awards, which are awarded each year at the annual IXDA Interaction conference, with the first awards given in 2012.

Janice Fraser

Janice Fraser founds LuxR, bringing lean design to startup companies

Rochelle King

Rochelle King becomes Vice President, User Experience & Product Services at Netflix

Sylvia Harris

Sylvia Harris cofounds the non-profit Public Policy Lab in order to bring design and design processes to civic policy initiatives. She is considered a pioneer in the field of social impact design.

Sylvia Harris

Sylvia Harris dies unexpectedly

Kaaren Hanson

Kaaren Hanson becomes Vice President, Design Innovation at Intuit

Samantha Warren

Samantha Warren creates the technique of Style Tiles to quickly capture the visual UI elements for web applications.

Abby Covert

Abby Covert inventsWorld IA Day which launchs in 2012.

Dina El-Zanfaly

Dina El-Zanfaly Is the cofounder & codirector of Fab Lab Egypt (FLE), the first community maker space in northern Africa and the Arab world

Rochelle King

Rochelle King becomes Global VP of Product Design and Insights at Spotify

Liz Ogbu

Liz Ogbu becomes the first ever Scholar in Residence at California College of the Arts

Lisa Strausfeld

Lisa Strausfeld becomes Global Head of Data Visualization at Bloomberg LP

Christina Wodtke

Christina Wodtke founds Women Talk Design to provide a directory of women speakers to conference organizers

Brooke Thompson

Brooke Thompson joins the Kleiner Perkins Design Council

Dorelle Rabinowitz

Dorelle Rabinowitz leads the team charged with creating Intuit’s design system unifying all their products across platforms.

Liz Ogbu

Liz Ogbu joins the faculty at Stanford University

Karen Holtzblatt

Karen Holtzblatt founds the Women in Tech Project

Dana Chisnell

Dana Chisnell cofounds the Center for Civic Design, with Whitney Quesenbery.

Whitney Quesenbery

Whitney Quesenbery cofounds the Center for Civic Design, with Dana Chisnell.

danah boyd

danah boyd founds the Data and Society Research Institute

Irene Au

Irene Au joins Kholsa Ventures as a Managing Partner

Abby Covert

Abby Covert becomes President of the IA Institute

Daniela Jorge

Daniela Jorge becomes Vice President, Digital Design and User Experience at AT&T

Kaaren Hanson

Kaaren Hanson becomes VP Experience Design at Medallia

Jennifer Bove

Jennifer Bove becomes SVP, Group Design Director at Fjord

Maureen Macharia

Maureen Macharia cofounds the Wanan CHI chapter

Carole Bilson

Becomes President of the Design Management Institute.

Kat Vellos

Kat Vellos creates the Bay Area Black Designers community

Antonia Anni

Antonia Anni is the Founder/Curator of Platforms For Women

Laura Klein and Kate Rutter

Laura Klein and Kate Rutter begin hosting the podcast “What Is Wrong with UX?“

Liz Jackson

Liz Jackson founds the Disabled List a disability led organization that engages in disability as a creative practice

Meriah Moulton

Meriah Moulton becomes Chief Design Officer at USAA

Amelie Lamont

Amelie Lamont co-founds Dreamers // Doers

Julia Whitney

Julia Whitney becomes Executive Creative Director at the BBC

George Oates

George Oates creates and is CEO of Museum in a Box—a mini interactive exhibit that can be sent out to schools and other organizations that serve kids.

Jane Shih

Jane Shih is the City Founder- Taipei of Ladies that UX

Catherine Courage

Catherine Courage joins Google as VP of Ads and Commerce UX

Irene Au

Irene Au publishes “Design in Venture Capital.

Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand and Michael Bierut join the faculty of Yale SOM

Shahrzad Darafsheh

Shahrzad Darafsheh is the Co-founder & Chief Design Officer at Billflow

Amy Jiménez Márquez

Amy Jiménez Márquez becomes owner and publisher of Boxes and Arrows

Amber Case

Amber Case authors Calm Technology for O’Reilly Media

Kavitha Krishnan

Kavitha Krishnan Co Founds the Better By Design Conference

Priyanka Kakar

Priyanka Kakar becomes Director, Interaction Design & User Experience of The Walt Disney Company

Kara DeFrias

Kara DeFrias becomes Director of Experience Design for Vice President Biden on his Cancer Moonshot initiative in the Obama White House.

Dori Tunstall

Dori Tunstall becomes the first black, and black female Dean of Design at Toronto’s OCAD University, becoming the first black woman to head design faculty anywhere.

Danielle Forward

Danielle Forward founds Natives Rising to promote visibility of Native Americans and Indigineous people within tech and design.

Jules Forest

Jules Forest creates the Women Who Design directory

Ari Melenciano

Ari Melenciano is the founding Director of Afrotectopia

Mary Gathithi Wangari

Mary Gathithi Wangari cofounds the Nairobi Design Community

Kate Aronowitz

Kate Aronowitz joins Google Ventures (GV) as Design Partner.

Danielle Barnes

Danielle Barnes becomes CEO of Women Talk Design and begins a series of initiatives to expand the groups offerings and impact

Olga V. Perfilieva

Olga V. Perfilieva becomes Co-Organizer of Ladies that UX Boston

Alisha Ramos

Alisha Ramos is founder and CEO of Girls’ Night In

Doreen Lorenzo

Doreen Lorenzo becomes Assistant Dean for the new School of Design and Creative Technologies at the University of Texas

Ivy Mukherjee

Ivy Mukherjee co-creates the Indians Who Design directory.

Vanessa Cho

Vanessa Cho joins GV as a Design Partner.

Mariana Valenzuela & Carolina Sepúlveda R.

Mariana Valenzuela & Carolina Sepúlveda R. cofounds +Mujeres en UX experience the first community of women UXers in Latin America (Chile, Peru, Argentina and Mexico)

Kim Lenox

Kim Lenox becomes VP Product Design and Research at Zendesk

Sarah Alpern

Sarah Alpern becomes VP of Design at LinkedIn

Rochelle King

Rochelle King becomes VP, Creative Production at Netflix

Maureen Macharia

Maureen Macharia founds the UX and Product conference and community in Nariobi in order to foster community for these emerging disciplines.

Janice Fraser

Janice Fraser is a founding partner of Seneca Ventures, a VC firm focused on women and BIPOC founders.

Cathy Lee Davenport

Cathy Lee Davenport becomes Vice President, Interactive Design (HBO)

Kaaren Hanson

Kaaren Hanson becomes ExecutiveVP Experience Design & Research at Wells Fargo

Tereza Alux

Tereza Alux serves as Global Director for Ladies that UX

danah boyd

danah boyd receives the eff.org Barlow/Pioneer Award

Zuli Segura

Zuli Segura creates the Latinx Design Directory

Vivianne Castillo

Vivianne Castillo founds HumanityCentred

Daniela Jorge

Daniela Jorge becomes Chief Design Officer for Global Design at PayPal

Leslie Witt

Leslie Witt becomes Chief Design Officer at Headspace Inc.

Liz Jackson

Liz Jackson becomes Designer-In-Residence at the School of Visual Arts

Ovetta Sampson

Ovetta Sampson becomes a Principal Design Director at Microsoft

Sasha Constanza-Chock

Sasha Constanza-Chock becomes a Senior Research Fellow at The Algorithmic Justice League

Jennifer Bove

Jennifer Bove becomes Head of Design, B2B Payments at Capital One

Lisa Strausfeld

Lisa Strausefeld becomes VP Design at System Inc, a company building software to help the world see and solve anything as a system

Dori Tunstall

Dori Tunstall is the first black female dean of design and is currently Dean of Design at Ontario College of Art and Design University in Ontario, Canada.

Kaaren Hanson

Kaaren Hanson becomes Chief Design Officer of Consumer & Community Banking at J.P. Morgan Chase

Amber Case

Amber Case becomes a research fellow with Mozilla Foundation

Jennifer Bove

Becomes Vice President, UX & Product Design at Salesforce

Ovetta Sampson

Becomes Vice President of Machine Learning UX Design & Responsible AI at Capital One

Grace Lau and Andrea Rosenbusch

Grace Lau and Andrea Rosenbusch spearhead turning the World IA Day event into the World Information Architecture Association which will continue to sponsor the annual global event. The Association fills the hole left by the demise of the Information Architect Institute.