Bruce Tognazzini

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Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini is a usability consultant in partnership with Donald Norman and Jakob Nielsen in the Nielsen Norman Group, which specializes in human computer interaction. He was with Apple Computer for many years, then with Sun Microsystems and then WebMD. He has written two books, Tog on Interface and Tog on Software Design, and he publishes the webzine Asktog, with the tagline "Interaction Design Solutions for the Real World".

Tog (as he is widely known in computer circles) was an early and influential employee of Apple Computer, listed on the back of his book Tog on Interface (Addison Wesley, 1991) as "Apple Employee #66". In his early days at Apple, he was known as the author of Super Hi-Res Chess, a novelty program for the Apple II that, despite its name, did not play chess or have any hi-res graphics; instead, it seemed to crash to the Applesoft BASIC prompt with an error message, but was actually a clever parody of Apple's command line interface. His extensive work in user-interface testing and design, such as The Apple Human Interface Guidelines, played an important role in the direction of Apple's product line throughout the 1990s.

When he was at working at Sun with Jakob Nielsen in 1994, he produced the Starfire video prototype, in order to give an idea of a usability centered vision of the Office of the future.

Tognazzini is now affiliated with the Nielsen Norman Group, founded by Nielsen and Don Norman. The Ask Tog website is part of the NNG website.

[edit] Bibliography

The Apple Human Interface Guidelines (1987) ISBN 0-201-17753-6 (uncredited, author is Apple Computer, Inc)
Tog on Interface (1992) ISBN 0-201-60842-1
Tog on Software Design (1995) ISBN 0-201-48917-1