Jef Raskin passed away last weekend. He was my friend and mentor.

I met Jef in 2001, after a talk he gave at Stanford (video of the talk). I asked him to sign my copy of The Humane Interface and then we chatted about some of the things in the book.

Since then, we’ve worked together under what is now known as The Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces. (Jef protested about us using his name, but we insisted.)

It makes me sad to think we’ll never talk again, but I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished so far. Soon, we’ll be able to share the first piece of our humane computing environment with the world. It’s called Archy.

It’ll be exciting to see how people react. We’re working hard to help people understand that Archy is only one piece of the puzzle. I think the real fun will come when we integrate Archy with the other parts of our system, specifically the zooming environment. It’s going to be really, really sexy.

Luckily, Jef left us with a wonderfully idealistic and well articulated vision—one that will serve our organization for many years to come. I just hope our work will live up to being the memorial that I think he deserves.