Mozilla has hired several developers from Humanized, a small software company that is known for its considerable usability expertise and innovative user interface design. The Humanized developers will be working at Mozilla Labs on Firefox and innovative new projects. We talked to Mozilla CEO John Lilly, who provided some additional details.

"Mozilla has hired three of the principals from Humanized. They will be joining the Mozilla Labs team on January 16, 2008. We expect a lot of innovation work from them, some Firefox-related, some broader, just like everything else in Mozilla Labs," Lilly told us. "The work done by the Humanized principals speaks for itself—there are lots of great, web-relevant ideas in their work, and we're excited to have them join Mozilla."

It should be noted that this is not an acquisition, as some have erroneously reported elsewhere in the blogosphere. Lilly clarifies that: "This was not an acquisition. No premium was paid and no intellectual property was acquired by Mozilla."

I met Humanized president Aza Raskin (son of Macintosh luminary Jef Raskin) at the Ubuntu Developer Summit last year. At the summit, Aza gave a very informative presentation about user interface design and discussed usability issues in several applications. His design philosophy extends from the belief that the best kind of interface is no interface at all. He advocates creating software that conforms to the Taoist notion of Wu Wei, which is to "act without doing."

Mozilla's recruitment of interface experts from Humanized is a very nice move. We have seen some really intriguing technologies coming out of Mozilla labs lately and the addition of a few usability gurus will surely help Mozilla provide a better user experience.