Bill Buxton


William Arthur Stewart Buxton is a Canadian computer scientist and designer. He is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research. He is known for being one of the pioneers in the human–computer interaction field.

Background and contributions

Buxton received his bachelor's degree in music from Queen's University in 1973 and his master's degree in computer science from the University of Toronto in 1978.
Buxton's scientific contributions include applying Fitts' law to human-computer interaction and the invention and analysis of the marking menu. He pioneered multi-touch interfaces and music composition tools in the late 1970s, while working in the Dynamic Graphics Project at the University of Toronto. In 2007, he published Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design.
Buxton is a regular columnist at BusinessWeek. Before joining Microsoft Research he was chief scientist at Alias Wavefront and SGI from 1994 to 2002. In 2004, he was a visiting professor at the University of Toronto.
Buxton received the SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 for his many fundamental contributions to the human–computer interaction field. As of 2010, the Bill Buxton Award is handed out annually for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of HCI, completed at a Canadian university. In 2016, he was recognized for his lifelong work in human computer interaction design and received the Digifest Digital Pioneer Award.

Honours and awards