1)4000 BC: Feng Shui and the importance of space

Dating back some 6,000 years, Feng Shui literally translates as “wind” and “water”, and refers
to the spatial arrangement of objects (e.g. furniture) in relation to the flow of energy (chi).

In practice, 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.

The end goal is the same: to create an intuitive, user-friendly experience. In this respect, you
could say that Feng Shui was one of the earliest nods to UX as we know it today.

2)1800 BC Cuneiform writing

Protowriting: cuneiform, Chinese pictogram

3)500 BC: The Ancient Greeks and ergonomics

The origins of UX can also be traced right back to Ancient Greece. 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.”

One of the strongest indications that the Ancient Greeks were well aware of ergonomic
principles is the way that Hippocrates described how a surgeon’s workplace should be set up.
He refers to the lighting in the room, the surgeon’s positioning—“the surgeon may stand or be
seated, in a posture comfortable for him”—and the arrangement of tools; “they must be
positioned in such a way as to not obstruct the surgeon, and also be within easy reach when
required.”

4)450 BC : Greek optical telegraph

5)Early 1400s Johannes Gutenberg

6)Circa 1430: Leonardo da Vinci’s “kitchen nightmare”

Michael Gelb’s wonderful book “How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci” recounts the story of the
Duke of Milan commissioning da Vinci to design the kitchen for a high-profile feast. The great
Maestro took the job on with his usual inventive flair. In what is considered the first use of the
technology (hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution) da Vinci designed and
employed conveyor belts to transport food items to the preparers. He also built what is likely
the first sprinkler system for safety measures.
Comically, however, the conveyer belts operated too erratically for the workers and—to make
matters worse—the sprinkler system went off, ruining some of the food.
While this particular case was a disaster, it’s an early story that bears the trace of user
experience design practices to come.

7)16th century : Gothic architecture

8)1885 : First Tabulating Machine (computer)
9)1876-77: Telephone
10)Early 1900s: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the quest for workplace efficiency

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.  Although Taylorism was widely criticised
for the way it reduced people to mere cogs in a machine, Taylor’s focus on optimizing the
relationship between humans and their tools is certainly reminiscent of some key UX principles
11)Early 1900s: Taylorism and the Industrial Revolution

Frederick Winslow Taylor, a mechanical engineer and one of the first management
consultants, authored “The Principles of Scientific Management,” a widely influential study of
engineering efficiency. Along with Henry Ford’s pioneering mass-production techniques, Taylor
and his supporters shaped the early vision of what interactions between laborers and their
tools should be like.

12)1930 Magnetic recording tape, full-color printing

13)1940s: Toyota and the value of human input

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.

This represents a key step in UX history as it really brought attention to the importance of how
humans interact with machines. No matter how advanced technology is, its value is limited to
its usability—and that’s exactly what UX design is all about

14)1948: Toyota and the humanizing of the production system

While Toyota, like Ford, valued efficiency in engineering and production, it also sought its
employees input. The assembly workers’ contributions were valued greatly—almost as much
as the technologies used. The roaring success that Toyota experienced as a result brought new
attention to the role of human interaction with technology.

15)1948: Claude Shannon Boolean

16)1952 : mouse
17)1955: Zenith wireless remote control
18)1955: Henry Dreyfuss and the art of designing for people

Another key figure in the history of UX design is 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 nutshell: “When the
point of contact between the product and the people becomes a point of friction, then the
[designer] has failed. On the other hand, if people are made safer, more comfortable, more
eager to purchase, more efficient—or just plain happier—by contact with the product, then the
designer has succeeded.”

19)1955: Dreyfuss’ Designing for People

Henry Dreyfuss, an American industrial designer, wrote the classic text “Designing for
People.”In it, he writes:

When the point of contact between the product and the people becomes a point of friction, then
the industrial designer has failed.

On the other hand, if people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more
efficient—or just plain happier—by contact with the product, then the designer has succeeded.

These principles, which include today’s oft-invoked concept of delight, have only grown more
relevant as the points of contact between product and person proliferate.

20)!957: IBM type 704

21)1957: Imaging and first scanner
22)1966: Walt Disney—the first UX designer?

Engineers aren’t the only ones who had a part to play in the history of UX. He might not seem
like the most obvious candidate, but 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…

Disney envisioned a place where “the latest technology can be used to improve the lives of
people” - a vision that today’s UX designers no doubt share.

23)1966: Disney and the role of joy

In a very early-stage announcement of what would later become Disney World, Walt Disney
described the project as “always in the state of becoming, a place where the latest technology
can be used to improve the lives of people.” His imaginative use of technology to bring people
joy continues to inspire user experience designers.

24)1970s: Xerox, Apple and 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. Since then, Apple has
been a true innovator of user experience, from the first iPod in 2001 to the iPhone in 2007. The
tech giant even had a hand in coining the term UX design

1970s: PARC and the design of personal computers

Xerox’s famous research arm, PARC, gave form and function to the design of computers for
human use. Bob Taylor, a trained psychologist and engineer, led his team in building some of
the most important and enduring tools of human-computer interaction, including the graphical
user interface (GUI) and the mouse.

1995: Donald Norman gives UX Design a name

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 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: I wanted
to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with a system, including industrial design,
graphics, the interface, the physical interaction, and the manual.”

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.

1995: Don Norman, the first user experience professional

By this point, user experience design was very much happening—it just didn’t have a label yet.
Cue Donald Norman!

An electrical engineer and cognitive scientist by trade, Don Norman joined Apple to help with
the research and design of its upcoming line of human-centered products. He asked to be
called “User Experience Architect,” marking the first use of the term in a job title. By this time
Don Norman had also written his classic book, “The Design of Everyday Things,” which
championed design for usability and functionality rather than aesthetics. It remains hugely
influential for designers today.
1977: ARPANET
1980s: Cognitive ergonomics and design started gaining importance
1993 : mosaic: web browser
2006 Era of start of youtube and monetization through ads

2007: the iPhone

Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at MacWorld 2007, calling it a “leapfrog product” that
promised to be far easier to use than any other smartphone on the market. Not only did it
deliver on its promise, but it changed the landscape of mobile devices forever, catapulting
Apple into its current position as one of the world’s most successful companies.

The genius of the original iPhone, arguably, lay in its fusion of superior hardware and software
to provide connectivity through a revolutionary capacitive touchscreen, making the physical
keyboards of other phones obsolete. Put more simply, it provided a user experience far
superior to that of any other contemporary phone.

And this inadvertently led to current business focus on user experience. If Apple’s emphasis on
delivering great user experiences was winning them market success and critical accolades,
others wanted in on it too.

CURRENT ERA: websites, video games

The future of user experience

Every major milestone in the evolution of UX has involved an interaction between technology
and human beings. As technology and the internet continue to weave themselves into our
lives, we can expect to see UX continue to evolve. This will bring to light the need for more
specialized skills in the multidisciplinary practice, including user research, graphic design,
customer advocacy, software development, and more. In fact, a search on Indeed.com for jobs
related to user experience shows that over 6,000 jobs have been posted in the last 15 days.

The internet is no longer confined to our laptops or smartphones—wearables and even

implantables can now put is in a state of constant communication. This presents opportunities
for user experience professionals to design interactions that transcend form factors with the
ultimate purpose of improving people’s lives.
So whether you’re a da Vinci or a Ford, a Dreyfuss or a Disney, a Taylor or a Jobs, it looks like
you’ll have plenty of opportunities to bring the world better user experiences