Aaron Marcus

Mr. Aaron Marcus is the founder/President of Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. (AM+A). A graduate in physics from Princeton University and in graphic design from Yale University, he has lectured worldwide since 1968 about user-interface design, information visualization, and user-experience design. In the early 1980s he founded AM+A, and began research as a Co-Principal Investigator of a project in computer-program visualization funded by the US Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He was the keynote speaker for ACM/SIGGRAPH 1980, the organizer and chair of the opening plenary panel for ACM/SIGCHI 1999, and the closing keynote plenary speaker for UPA 2005, the Usability Professional's Association's  annual conference.

In 2007, the AIGA named him a Fellow for his cross-cultural design work. In 2008, ACM's CHI Academy elected him a member, the first-ever graphic designer. In 2009, the Business Forms Management Association awarded him the Jo Warner Prize for his lifetime contribution to forms-systems design. In 2009, the Usability Professionals Association awarded him a service award for his six years' of being the Editor-in-Chief of User Experience (UX). In 2011, The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) named him a Distinguished Engineer for his lifetime achievements. He now serves as the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of User Experience and writes the On the Edge column in each issue. He is also an Editor of Information Design Journal, and was a regular columnist of Interactions for five years. He is on the Editorial Boards of Visible Language, Universal Access Journal, and the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. He is a Visiting Professor of the IIT Institute of Design, Chicago.

Mr. Marcus has written over 300 articles; written/co-written/edited six books, including Human Factors and Typography for More Readable Programs (1990), Graphic Design for Electronic Documents and User Interfaces (1992), The Cross-GUI Handbook for Multiplatform User Interface Design (1994), and Mobile TV: Customizing Content and Experience (2010). He has contributed chapters/case studies to five handbooks of user-interface design, information appliances, and culture.

In 2011, the International Institute of Information Design in Vienna, Austria, awarded three design awards for AM+A's mobile application concept designs built around sustainability, healthcare, and wealth management, which also combine persuasion design with information design. Mr. Marcus focuses his attention on the Web, mobile devices, and social networks, helping the industry to learn about user-centered user-interface and information-visualization design, and providing guidelines for globalization/localization, cross-cultural communication design, and persuasion design.