This memorial website was created in memory of our loved one, Nigel Bevan, 71, born on July 18, 1946 and passed away on March 27, 2018. We will remember him forever.
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There is a charity giving page for Nigel at:
https://www.justgiving.com/teams/nigelbevan
Please feel free to contribute to one of two charities chosen by his family as a way of honouring his memory.
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There is an additional page dedicated to Nigel's memory by the
UXPA - User Experience Professionals Association International. Please contact the director of Web, rajesh@uxpa.org with any stories about Nigel which will share on The UXPA website.
Tributes
Leave a tributeMy thoughts are with his family at this time of the year.
Thanks to all those that posted such wonderful pictures!
The story starts with Dr Ivan Brown at the Medical Research Council (MRC) in Cambridge. He was asked for contributions to the evolving term of Information Technology or IT as it came to be known. The National Electronics Council wanted to create a report* and he asked me to join the committee. Nigel wasn't on the committee but his colleague Ian Umbers, from the Dept of Industry was.
I made the report a glossy affair and it had a Forward by the Duke of Kent** and tons of recommendations for different national organisations. Although Nigel isn't mentioned as being in the editorial group this report set the scene for the formation of the British Computer Society (BCS) Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Special Interest Group.
We were both determined to make it's first conference BCS HCI85 a success. Academic conferences, at that time, were monologue events: programme committees created the structure based on their view of the subject: at the end of each session,attendees were given the chance to ask questions. In a revolutionary move, Nigel gave me four goals for the conference to achieve: thus making it a Strategic rather than a Scientific event. I recruited participants who called themselves 'Goalies'. These intrepid souls attended sessions of their choice and collectively reported back in the daily final plenary session and integrated their views with spontaneous reactions from all the other attendees.
The goalies had lunch with me which enabled them to bounce ideas off each other. This conference was indeed different. It was what was needed at the time and Nigel delivered. That conference contributed to the emerging professional scene which influenced the Alvey Programme where I subsequently organised 5 Research Planning workshops on Voice Recognition, Pattern Recognition, Human Factors, Man/Computer Interaction and one other.
All this was possible because Nigel had the courage to trust me. He decided to break the rigid format of previous Scientific Conferences. That conference and those workshops illustrated what the UK Academics could do if they worked together, shared their thoughts, ideas and concepts outwith the confines of their establishments/universities. Nigel was in the right place: the National Physical Laboratory NPL. He had the clout, the knowledge and the authority to change the way people ... Users ... were viewed by the Computer Industry. It was a message that Steve Jobs and the early Apple folk absorbed easily but not so the emerging computer establishment. They needed national and international standards to encourage them and this is what he and Tom Stewart did through their tireless subsequent efforts.
Sadly in 1989 my career was brought to a nasty end when a drunk driver nearly killed me at 08.30 one September day ... so I never met Nigel again but I am still in touch with Jonathan Earthy and Brain Sherwood Jones who were two of the goalies.
Nigel was a very respected British Scientific civil servant who served his country and his subject to the best of his ability. May he rest in peace.
...
* A scanned version of this report is available upon request.
** This is what he said ... 'Information Technology Year' (1982) has reminded many people in this country that we are standing now on the threshold of a technological revolution. The changes we
can expect to see during the next five to ten years seem likely to be even more dramatic than those brought about
by the first Industrial Revolution. Hardly anyone will avoid being affected in some way by the new technology and it is clear that society will need to reshape itself to meet this challenge.
In 2007, Nigel was invited to be an expert within the MAUSE COST Action, a European network on Usability. Nigel continued to collaborate within the follow on TwinTide network on design and evaluation methods. HCI research had moved on considerably since Nigel refocused on the UPA, but he quickly embraced new thinking on design strategies and the nature of design and evaluation methods. He consulted MAUSE action members on new HCI standards and brought his outstanding drafting expertise to bear on the 2010 Dagstuhl White Paper on User Experience (UX, www.allaboutux.org), where Nigel and I wrote the section on temporal aspects of UX. Over the course of 25 years I often benefited from Nigel's professional approach to management and his efficient approaches to getting things done.
As one of Nigel's successors as a former Chair of BCS HCI SG, I very much value the foundations that Nigel laid squarely and firmly for British HCI. As a management team member for both the MAUSE and TwinTide COST actions, I valued Nigel's links through to international standards and the wisdom that he brought to collaborative authoring of documents.
My last interactions with Nigel were last year when he was planning a new European COST action on Kansei Engineering. At an age when most of us would be enjoying our retirement, Nigel was no less proactive, enthusiastic and committed than he was over 30 years ago when I first worked with him. The UXPA and HCI standards communities will sorely miss Nigel's energy, expertise and dedication.
However, as anyone who has ever travelled with Nigel will know, he always took advantage of any travel opportunities to seek out adventures, often involving complex and detailed travel arrangements. I guess it is not surprising that his untimely end should have involved just such an adventure.
However, one of my favourite memories was when the ISO committee which I chaired was invited to China in 1987 and the hosts invited us to participate in a post meeting tour of such icons as the Great Wall, the Shaolin Temple and the Terracotta warriers. However, they had not arranged anything for our first evening in Beijing – an oversight Nigel was quick to remedy. With considerable persistence and persuasion (traits well known to his colleagues), Nigel organised an outing to an astonishing acrobatic circus performance. Luckily I was accompanied by my wife and children and I can honestly say it was one of the highlights of the trip. We still talk about it, 40 years on.
The world of ergonomics and usability standards will miss Nigel greatly and I wish to pass on to his family the deepest condolences from the UK Applied Ergonomics Committee (PH9).
Tom Stewart
Chair BSI Applied Ergonomics Committee PH9
Chair ISO TC159 SC4 Ergonomics of Human-System Interaction (from 1983 to 2017)
En droppe som faller i tidernas ström
Den skimrar i regnbågens färg en minut
brister och faller och drömmen är slut
- Nils Ferlin
Rest in peace, Nigel
I well remember our talks at Kuching, and during the past events...and when Nigel took the leadership for COST action, in order to find the best way to step-up our European Kansei Group.
I am very impressed by the way, You, his family, are sharing with us, courageously, all your positive words, and memories, with pride on his challenging mindset beyond your private sadness for this loss …
We mill miss him !
Family and friends, please accept my most sincere condolences.
Leave a Tribute
Please be patient.
Usability Evaluation at the Inland Revenue
in 1994, Nigel and his Human-Computer Interaction Group at NPL were engaged by the Inland Revenue (IR) to advise on usability engineering. Over the next couple of years, they conducted 5 usability evaluations in the organisation. I was with the IR team and attended many planning meetings with Nigel and participated in some of the evaluations: during that period, Nigel and his colleagues taught me most of what I know about usability. It was an exciting and exhilarating experience which I have never forgotten.
My Mentor & Friend
Nigel was a mentor and confidante as I, at 28 (the year 2000) tried to enter the UX agency world. He always had time for me. And through one particularly difficult occasion when a competitor caused me a lot of personal anguish, kept me level headed and gave me direction. I was ready to quit. But his advice was for me to stay strong. In his mild-mannered way he gave me untold strength. Nigel was at Serco at the time. We often competed for work. But always remained friends. One particularly favourite trip with Nigel was to UPA, Colorado. Where we all went out to a bar with a buffalo head on the wall. Of course Nigel knew why people were raising their glass and toasting the buffalo. A football team had won a game. He decided to join in. So we all ended up joining in. Steve Krug included! The next morning he was up at 6am walking the trails! His selfless guidance helped me professionally and personally. The agency morphed, grew larger and was sold to EY in 2015. I owe Nigel’s steadfast friendship a great deal, for helping me bring my dream to reality for my family & I.
Catriona Campbell
From ISO TC159 member volunteers in Japan
Eulogy for Nigel Bevan, Ph.D.
We would like to send our condolences to the family on the sudden loss of Dr. Nigel Bevan. He was greatly involved in ISO activities, particularly the ISO 9241 series. We will remember him as someone who thrived in his role as a proponent of new ideas and new ways of thinking about existing models. We, the Japanese, UK, German, Canadian and other members, were very fortunate to be able to meet with him for engaging and fruitful discussions in many places around the world, whether in Tokyo or Sapporo or European cities. We the Japanese members often face language difficulties because all ISO documents are written in English and we benefited greatly from his solicitude and support.
Nigel’s knowledge of usability was vast due to his love of travelling. We will fondly remember the many interesting stories and experiences he shared with us while drinking beers in British style bars after our ISO meetings.
Since Nigel’s impact on ISO TC159 is enormous, we will continue to benefit from his excellent contributions and will gratefully integrate the concepts he was working on before his passing.
We pray for his soul.
ISO TC159 member volunteers in Japan;
Shin’ichi FUKUZUMI, Masaaki KUROSU, Daiji KOBAYASHI, Naotake HIRASAWA, Ayako HASHIZUME, Takaaki HAYAKAWA, Naotsune HOSONO, Hiroyuki MIKI, Yoshihiko NAKANO, Mikie OI, Sakae YAMAMOTO, Masayasu YAMAMOTO,
Yusuke YAZU, Ryoji YOSHITAKE.