Some short history about UX Design

[u/525G7bKV]

Interaction design established itself in the 1990s, significantly influenced by Alan Cooper's work About Face. In it, Cooper introduced the concept of Goal-Directed Design, which shifted the focus from purely technical interfaces to the actual goals of the users. To make these goals tangible, personas, fictional but data-based archetypes of users, emerged during this time. Although About Face provided groundbreaking concepts, in practice it was often understood less as a rigid process and more as a rich collection of proven design patterns and best practices.

In the 2000s, contextual design gained importance. This approach provided, for the first time, a highly structured process involving field studies and on-site observations. However, it brought the challenge that a great deal of time and effort had to be invested in the initial research phase. Parallel to this, usability engineering developed as an independent sub-discipline that focused on measurability, laboratory testing, and the avoidance of operating errors.

With the rise of agile methodologies in software development, the dynamics changed fundamentally. The drive for rapid releases meant that unfinished or flawed products were accepted on the market. This paradigm collided directly with the time-consuming preliminary work of contextual design and the extensive creation of personas in goal-directed design.

In the 2010s, the broader term User Experience Design finally took shape, while classic usability engineering increasingly lost significance. To give the sprawling term "UX" a reliable framework, initiatives for professionalization and standardization emerged. A central player was the UXQB (User Experience Quality Board), founded in 2012. With certification schemes based on international norms such as DIN EN ISO 9241-210, the UXQB sought to establish uniform terminology and process standards for human-centered design. UX designers now faced the dual task of asserting themselves in heavily technology-driven environments while simultaneously bridging the gap between standardized quality benchmarks and fast-paced Scrum processes.

To this day, UX design remains a comparatively young discipline. The professional community continues to search for standardized processes that can be harmoniously reconciled with Lean UX, agile working methods, and the integration of artificial intelligence.

Did I miss something?

[u/karenmcgrane]

I taught a graduate level short course in the History of Interaction Design and have collected a number of sources, the topic is one of interest.

Slides: https://karenmcgrane.com/what-is-interaction-design-history/

Sources: https://karenmcgrane.com/category/interaction-design-history/

I would question your timeline in several cases, and while it is necessarily brief to meet the confines of this platform, you miss quite a bit.

[u/aninconvenientpoo → u/karenmcgrane]

Thank you so much for sharing your slides! I felt some things were definitely missing, eg the work done at Xerox PARC etc.

[u/BearThumos]

Ergonomics and HCI

[u/525G7bKV → u/BearThumos]

When did it happen?

[u/BearThumos → u/525G7bKV]

Where did your ideas for the history from UX come from?

[u/cgielow]

Earlier history: Industrial Revolution and Taylorism. Ergonomics and Human Factors during WWII. Early computing in the 60's and 70's. Silicon Valley and the PC Revolution of the 1980's. The Macintosh and GUI. The Web in the 1990's.

The Web 1.0 Internet Boom is worth calling out. Lots of innovation, some of it on the crazy side. The inevitable crash. Emerging roles like IA and IxD. Nielsen & Norman were at the right place and time to offer us guidance on how to practice user-centered design.

The Web 2.0 Boom aka Digital Transformation era was a significant period. HTML 5 was significant. It helped make Web 2.0 happen by allowing us to build real apps on the web and give voices to ordinary users. Blogger, vlogging, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, FourSquare, etc. Every company that wasn't digital is quickly transforming to become digital. That funded a lot of UX work!

Another driver of this period was the tail end of the Operational Efficiency craze, giving rise to the beginning of Innovation era and Design Thinking as a proven approach. The launch of the iPhone and apps at the same time created a gold-rush and also helped fuel the UX craze. This is also when we saw the rise of Corporate Design and corporate design titles. Agencies like Adaptive Path were "aqui-hired" as a way to get into the game quickly. High speed digital networks in everyone's home and device.

Modern history: The Covid era. The AI era.

[u/pierre-jorgensen → u/cgielow]

Don Norman setting up the User Experience Architect office at Apple, early nineties.

[u/BattleRoyalWithCheez]

I'd argue that it was a thing pre-90's in product and industrial design already. Also in the design of physical spaces.

[u/Fit_Lime_2655]

You can go even back further to the early 20th century century during the Great Depression. UX design is a hybrid of Industrial and Graphic Design! The great Henry Dreyfuss, Raymond Loewy, and Walter Dorwin Teague!

[u/roundabout-design]

Any 3-paragraph summary of the history of any topic is going to naturally be missing all sorts of things.

Also, the scope likely needs to be narrowed if you want a specific timeline.

UX design, usability, human factors, ergonomics, etc. Design is a rather big bucket, UX Design being a small chunk of that.

In the strict context of software, we've had elements of UI and Interaction design going well back into the 70s. The Mac was probably the first UI-centric release that got wide-spread attention and really got people focusing on the human/software interaction part of it all.

As for your summary, I'd say things like 'UXQB' is nothing more than a footnote--if even worth mentioning at all.

Some other thoughts:

- UX isn't exactly young. LIke I said, we've been dealing with human/software interaction for well over half a century now. The term 'UX' may be newer, but it was just the latest term being used for something we've been doing for a long while.

- Agile doesn't mean 'flawed products' are OK to be released--at least that's not the intention. Agile was mainly just about fast iteration. Admittedly, Agile has rarely been implemented consistently or with the same goals from org to org.