posted on Friday, July 25, 2008 10:19 AM by paul

Randy Pausch October 23, 1960 to July 25, 2008

Randy Pausch loses battle with pancreatic cancer at 47

Whitney Hess was a student of Randy's at CMU - He taught the most difficult course I took to receive my degree in Human-Computer Interaction. It was called Programming Usable Interfaces and was essentially about how to express your ideas through functional prototypes. The course materials introduced me to the most prominent thought-leaders in the field (Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman, Jesse James Garrett, Steve Krug), and the assignments were unbelievably rigorous.

Randy insisted that any GUI developer or user experience designer (the course contained both types) worth his salt has to have the ability to prototype his ideas and the balls to test them with real people. And ultimately, the inner strength to admit he was wrong and make the design better.

In May Randy spoke at the Carnegie Mellon University commencement ...we don't beat the Reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well.
The Last Lecture

Comments

# re: Randy Pausch October 23, 1960 to July 25, 2008 @ Friday, July 25, 2008 11:31 PM

I wish I had known him. I could have learned so much just by being in his company.

BB

Bethew B. Jennings, Jr.