User Experience History: More than 100 years of amazing wonders

UX has roots over a century deep, long before computers. From Taylor's stopwatch to Shneiderman's golden rules, here's how the discipline was built.

Quick answer

Though the term ‘user experience’ only appeared around 1996-1998, the discipline’s roots go back over 100 years, growing out of ergonomics, human factors and experimental (cognitive/behavioral) psychology. This timeline (Part 1) traces milestones from 1911 (Taylor’s scientific management) through the birth of HCI in 1982 to Shneiderman’s eight golden rules in 1987, including Bauhaus ‘form follows function’, Fitts’s Law, Miller’s magic number seven, Xerox PARC’s inventions, and the System Usability Scale.

Key takeaways

UX predates computers; it grew from ergonomics, human factors and psychology.
The name 'user experience' only emerged around 1996-1998.
Foundational laws: Fitts's Law (1954) and Miller's magic number seven (1956).
HCI was officially born in 1982 (the ACM SIGCHI-founding conference).
Xerox PARC (from 1969) gave us the mouse, GUI, personal computers, laser printing and Ethernet.

The timeline (1911-1987)

1911

Scientific management

Frederick Taylor publishes The Principles of Scientific Management (time-and-motion studies). Around the same time Dr. Alfredo Palacios studies working conditions in Argentina.

1916

Making work easier

Frank and Lillian Gilbreth break work into smaller steps to make it quicker and easier, from masonry to teaching soldiers to assemble weapons in the dark.

1919

Bauhaus

Walter Gropius founds the Bauhaus, seeding graphic and industrial design. Its maxim 'form follows function' pre-announces usability-based design.

1936

Usability as a selling point + the Turing Machine

A Frigidaire ad markets usability as a feature, and Alan Turing defines the Turing Machine, the theoretical basis of the computer and of AI.

1943

Human factors take shape

Alphonse Chapanis shows 'pilot error' drops with more intuitive cockpit controls; Le Corbusier creates the Modulor anthropometric scale.

1947

Usability research at Bell Labs

Industrial psychologist John Karlin heads a User Preferences (later Human Factors) department, refining the telephone keypad still used today.

1948

Human interaction at Toyota

Post-war Toyota values workers' assembly-line input almost as much as its technology, drawing wider attention to human interaction with technology.

1950

The Turing Test

Turing proposes the 'imitation game' to judge whether a machine's responses are indistinguishable from a human's, a foundation of AI. No AI has passed it as originally defined.

1954

Fitts's Law + Designing for People

Paul Fitts models the time to move to a target by size and distance (a UI cornerstone), and Henry Dreyfuss writes Designing for People, a classic on usability and friction.

1955-1970

Dieter Rams

Rams joins Braun and later writes the '10 Principles of Good Design', which shaped product, graphic and interface design (and famously inspired Apple).

1956

Miller's magic number seven

George Miller shows working memory holds about 7 (plus or minus 2) chunks, now known as Miller's Law.

1957

A home for human factors

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society forms.

1967

Formative vs summative

Michael Scriven's formative/summative assessment concepts later map onto types of usability evaluation.

1969

Xerox PARC and the GUI

Xerox PARC develops the mouse, GUI, personal computers, object-oriented programming, laser printing and Ethernet, much of what you use today.

1979-1981

Usability named and formalized

Bennett's paper is the first with 'usability' in its title; Ericsson & Simon formalize Think Aloud; the Wizard of Oz method is coined; Chapanis notes ~5-6 users reveal most usability problems.

1982

HCI is officially born

The first HCI conference (Gaithersburg) leads ACM to form SIGCHI, the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction.

1983-1984

GOMS and the Mac

Card, Moran & Newell publish The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction (GOMS, keystroke-level model); Steve Jobs launches the Macintosh, proving usability sells.

1985-1986

Iterative design and SUS

Gould & Lewis champion early user focus, empirical measurement and iterative design; John Brooke creates the System Usability Scale (SUS), now the standard usability questionnaire.

1987

Shneiderman's golden rules

Ben Shneiderman's Designing the User Interface introduces the eight golden rules of interface design, still the basis of heuristic evaluation.

Two foundational rule sets

Dieter Rams’ 10 principles of good design: good design is innovative, useful, aesthetic, understandable, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, thorough to the last detail, environmentally friendly, and as little design as possible.

Shneiderman’s 8 golden rules: strive for consistency; enable shortcuts for frequent users; offer informative feedback; design dialogs to yield closure; offer simple error handling; permit easy reversal of actions; support internal locus of control; and reduce short-term memory load.

How old is UX as a discipline?

Its roots go back over 100 years (to about 1911) in ergonomics, human factors and psychology, though the term ‘user experience’ only appeared around 1996-1998.

When was HCI born?

1982, when the first HCI conference in Gaithersburg led ACM to form SIGCHI (the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction).

What is Fitts's Law?

A 1954 model predicting the time to move to a target based on its size and distance, a cornerstone of user interface and product design.

What is Miller's Law (the magic number seven)?

George Miller’s 1956 finding that working memory holds about seven, plus or minus two, chunks of information at once.

Why does Xerox PARC matter to UX?

From 1969 it invented the mouse, the graphical user interface, personal computers, laser printing and Ethernet, the foundations of modern computing.

Want UX grounded in a century of theory? Talk to Dorve.

Start a project

Disclaimer: This content was translated to English from the original we wrote in Spanish, available in UXpañol.

Key takeaways

The timeline (1911-1987)

Two foundational rule sets

Want a team that knows the theory?