User experience design: a term that we instantly associate with apps and websites. Especially when considering the typical job description of a UX designer, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a purely modern concept.
Cognitive psychologist and designer Don Norman coined the term “user experience” in the 1990s—but UX predates its name by quite some decades.
Resources: The career foundry website.
2. 2
INDEX. 01 03
0402
ASK YOURSELF
UX DEFINITION UX NOWADAYS
THE HISTORYNice to meet you
l e t ’ s S t a r t
3. 3
ASK
YOURSELF.
Think about the last time you ate at a restaurant.
What made you to choose that particular restaurant?
What was your first impression as you walked in? Were you
asked to wait until you were ushered to an available seat?
How was the menu arranged?
Did food come quickly enough?
How did it taste?
How was the customer service?
Would you go back again?
Q U E S T I O N S
4. 4
YOUR
ANSWER.
A N S W E R S
Your answers to these questions, including all the
emotional highs and lows, encompass the restaurant’s
user experience (UX).
However, when people use the term UX, they’re usually
referring to one’s experience with a digital or technological
product or service.
The implication is that the user’s experience has been
designed and is, at least potentially, further designable.
5. 5
USER
EXPERIENCE.
D E F I N I T I O N
User experience refers to any interaction a user has
with a product or a service Like an app or a website.
Is the product easy to navigate?
Is it easy to find the information you need?
Is it easy to complete your desired tasks?
6. 6
DONALD
NORMAN.
S C I E N T I S T
Donald Norman, a cognitive scientist, joined the
team at Apple in the early 90s as their User
Experience Architect—making him the first person to
have UX in his job title.
He is co-founder and principal of the User
Experience/Usability consulting firm, the Nielsen
Norman group, which is the home for his consulting
and keynote talks.
7. 7
FIND THE
ORIGINS.
L E T ’ S F I N D
Where does the concept of UX come from what
factors and forces have shaped UX design as we
know it today.
8. 8
TIMELINE
UX.
H I S T O R Y
Actually, exploring the history of UX is crucial
to understanding this highly important field.
9. 9
4000 BC
FENG SHUI
H i s t o r y
Feng Shui is all about arranging your
surroundings in the most optimal, harmonious
or user-friendly way— be it an office, bedroom
or entire building. It concerns everything from
layout and framework to materials and colors.
Just as an interior designer might arrange the
furniture in a way that makes it easy for the
inhabitant to navigate the room, a UX designer
would apply similar principles to the task of
creating a mobile app.
H I S T O R Y
10. 10
500 BC
THE ANCIENT
GREEKS
There is evidence to suggest that, as early as the 5th
century BC, Greek civilizations designed their tools and
workplaces based on ergonomic principles.
According to the International Ergonomics Association,
ergonomics—or human factors—is “the scientific
discipline concerned with the understanding of
interactions among humans and other elements of a
system, and the profession that applies theory,
principles, data and methods to design and optimize
human well-being and overall system performance.”
H I S T O R Y
11. 11
ERALY 1900
FREDERICK
Taylor
Fast forward a few thousand years to meet Frederick
Winslow Taylor, a mechanical engineer and pioneer of
Taylorism—otherwise known as Scientific
Management. On a mission to make human labor
more efficient, Taylor conducted extensive research
into the interactions between workers and their tools.
In 1911, he wrote “The Principles of Scientific
Management” in which he asserted that systematic
management is the solution to inefficiency.
H I S T O R Y
12. 12
1940
TOYOTA
“LEAN”
Continuing on the quest for workplace efficiency,
Toyota developed their famous human-centered
production system. Unlike Taylorism, the Toyota
Production System was based upon respect for
people, and much attention was paid to creating the
optimal working environment. Not only that: human
input was considered crucial, and was actively
encouraged. Toyota factory workers could pull a
cord to stop the assembly line if they had feedback
or suggestions to improve the process, for example
—like usability testing in action, if you will.
H I S T O R Y
13. 13
1955
HENRY
DREYFUSS
Henry Dreyfuss, an American industrial engineer
who was renowned for designing and improving the
usability of some of the most iconic consumer
products—including the Hoover vacuum cleaner, the
tabletop telephone and the Royal Typewriter
Company’s Quiet DeLuxe model.
Dreyfuss’ design philosophy was based on common
sense and scientific approaches. In 1955, he wrote
Designing for People, which pretty much explains UX
design in a nutshel.
H I S T O R Y
14. 14
1966
WALT
DISNEY
Walt Disney is often hailed as one of the first UX
designers in history.
Indeed, Disney was obsessed with creating magical,
immersive, near-perfect user experiences, and the way
he set about building Disney World was a true stroke of
UX genius. In his article for UX Magazine, Joseph
Dickerson outlines Walt Disney’s guiding principles for his
team of engineers—or Imagineers, as he called them:
know your audience, wear your guest’s shoes,
communicate with color, shape, form and texture…
H I S T O R Y
15. 15
1970s
XEROX, APPLE
THE PC ERA
The 1970s kicked off the era of personal computers, with
psychologists and engineers working together to focus
on the user experience. Many of the most influential
developments came out of Xerox’s PARC research center,
such as the graphical user interface and the mouse. In
many ways, PARC set the tone for personal computing as
we know it today.
And now over to Apple. In 1984, the original Macintosh was
released—Apple’s first mass-market PC featuring a
graphical user interface, built-in screen and mouse.
H I S T O R Y
16. 16
1995
DONALD
NORMAN
He came up with the term “user experience design” as
a way of encompassing all that UX is. As he explains, “I
invented the term because I thought human interface
and usability were too narrow.
In 1988, Norman published The Psychology of Everyday
Things (later updated to The Design of Everyday
Things)—which continues to be a UX design staple to
this day.
H I S T O R Y
17. 17
2019
HISTORY IN
THE MAKING
U X N O W A D A Y S
UX design is constantly evolving, and the
fascinating journey continues. From Artificial
Intelligence to voice technology, from Virtual
Reality to design without interface—today’s UX
designers face new challenges every day.
Whatever the future holds, we’re sure it’ll be just as
exciting as the history that precedes it.
18. 18
USER
EXPERIENCE.
User experience refers to any interaction a user has
with a product or a service Like an app or a website.
Is the product easy to navigate?
Is it easy to find the information you need?
Is it easy to complete your desired tasks?
A G A I N
19. 19
THANK
YOU.
F I N A L L Y
If you fancy having a hand in shaping or sharing the
future of UX, you can read about what it takes to know
more about it by following all the resources I sent it in
the email, you can also ask me if you have any
questions about UX.
