We can not live without our computers and information appliance, but they are certainly hard to live with. A lot of this difficulty is unnecessary, and is a consequence of bad design and a profound misunderstanding of human psychology. Every current computer-related product design is based on ideas that, while only a quarter-century old, already have the status of received truths.

Research old and new tells us how we should design these products, and the conclusions are novel and surprising, showing that modest "fixes" to today's methods cannot succeed. This talk calls for nothing less than a revolution in information product design.

Jef Raskin is a user interface and system design consultant based in Pacifica, California. He is the author of "The Humane Interface" (Addison-Wesley 2000), the inventor of the Apple Macintosh and the Canon Cat computers, and was the CEO of Information Appliance, Inc. His clients range from start-ups to multinationals and government agencies, including NASA, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Motorola, NCR, Xerox, Ricoh, Canon, McKesson, Intel, and AT&T. Raskin's publications number over 500 articles in some 40 periodicals including Wired, Forbes ASAP, IEEE Spectrum, IEEE Computer, Nature, Quantum, newspapers, Innovations, and the Communications of the ACM. Raskin has taught computer science at the University of California, Stanford University, and elsewhere. He was the conductor and music director of the San Francisco Chamber Opera Co. See www.jefraskin.com for further information.