The Great History of User Experience – Part 2

This is the second part of the article about the history of user experience, which starts with User Experience History: More than 100 years of amazing wonders. If you came to this page from an external link or search engine, we recommend you start with the first part.

The history of user experience in digital age

By the mid-eighties, the history of UX design had come a long way from its initial, often disorganized beginnings. The emergence of computers as household appliances fundamentally changed the technological landscape, making computing accessible to the general public.

With increased speed, power, and features, computers transitioned from being tools for a select few scientists to essential devices for millions of consumers. This shift created a demand for improved user experiences, prompting the industry to respond with better products and services.

As a result, user experience had to adapt to meet these growing expectations. The need for organized processes around user requirements became evident, leading to the development of better research methods to measure user experiences scientifically. The history of UX in the digital age is characterized by rapid and complex technological advances, with revolutionary changes occurring within weeks of each other.

Many times it has been said that the 80s were the decade of excess. And in terms of technology and UX, we can clearly say that it was, without any doubt!

1985 – The year of the great Operative Systems

The first version of the Mac operating system (Mac OS) is released. It was notable for being one of the first systems with a graphical interface that had a mouse, windows, icons, and menus.

J. Gould and Clayton Lewis publish the influential article “Designing for Usability: Key Principles and What Designers Think“, proposing a new approach to user-centered design that emphasized empirical measurement and iterative design processes.

Richard Spenser’s Computer Usability Test and Evaluation was also published, contributing to the growing body of literature on usability.

Additionally, the Windows operating system was introduced, gaining popularity due to its graphical user interface (GUI), which served as a graphical extension of MS-DOS, a command-line-based interface.

1986 – Usability measurement

John Brooke of Digital Equipment Corporation creates a “quick and dirty” questionnaire to assess the usability of the software. The System Usability Scale (SUS). This questionnaire has become one of the most widely used tools for evaluating perceptions of system usability.

Despite its simplicity, the SUS is a crucial resource for UX researchers. Shortly after the annual SIGCHI conference in Boston, the first local SIGCHI chapter was established there, fostering community and collaboration among UX professionals.

1987 – UX Theory and Virtual Reality

Ben Shneiderman publishes the first edition of Designing the User Interface, which remains a cornerstone of user interface theory today.

Peter Rowe publishes the book Design Thinking, describing methods and approaches used by architects and urban planners. This early use of “design thinking” would evolve into a significant UX framework, paving the way for Urban UX.

The “Questionnaire on Satisfaction with User Interaction” (QUIS) was also published, based on research from Shneiderman’s HCI lab at the University of Maryland. QUIS serves as a competitor to the SUS, employing a Semantic Differential approach rather than a Likert scale, making it fundamentally different in its research methodology.

In the realm of virtual reality, Nintendo launched the Famicom 3D system, and Sega developed the Master System, both featuring virtual reality headsets with shutter lenses.

Additionally, Larry Wall invented Perl, an the first programming language for web application development, even before the Internet became widely accessible.

1988 – UX Research gets deep theoretical rules

John Whiteside of Digital Equipment Corporation and John Bennett of IBM publish several chapters and articles in “Usability Engineering” (Whiteside, Bennett & Holtzblatt, 1988) that emphasized initial goal setting, prototyping, and iterative evaluation. This work laid the groundwork for many UX methodologies that followed.

Joe Dumas, recognized as one of the pioneers of usability, viewed this period as the birth of usability as a profession.

Furthermore, Don Norman published The Psychology of Everyday Things, later retitled The Design of Everyday Things, which has had a profound influence on design thinking and usability principles.

1990 – The WWW revolution begins

Jakob Nielsen Rolf Molich publishes the seminal article “Heuristic Evaluation of User Interface” in which they described this influential method of discount usability testing. This method allows evaluators to identify usability problems in a user interface through a systematic examination based on established heuristics, making it a cornerstone in usability engineering 

Sir Timothy Berners-Lee develops several foundational technologies for the web, including Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the first web browser (called WorldWideWeb, which also served as a page editor), the first HTTP application server (later known as CERN httpd), the first web server (http://info.cern.ch), and the first web pages describing the project itself. These achievements marked a turning point in the history of user experience design and especially in Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Robert Virzi describes three experiments at the Society for Human Factors and Ergonomics conference that replicated Nielsen’s earlier work using the binomial formula to derive sample sizes for usability studies.

The purchases of high-tech devices (computers, communication devices, instruments) accounted for 20 percent of all commercial investments and drove up the penetration of personal computers in the population.

Brian Shackel publishes “Human Factors and Usability” in which usability is defined as a function of efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction (ISO 9241 item 11). These three aspects are still the most important when it comes to usability today.

1991 – The World Wide Web is conceived as a public network

Berners-Lee posts a brief summary of the World Wide Web project to the alt.hypertext newsgroup, envisioning the beginning of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet.

1992 – First mobile phone

Jim Lewis publishes the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) .

IBM and BellSouth jointly launch the IBM Simon Personal Communicator , the first mobile phone with PDA functionality (Personal Digital Assistant). The phone could send and receive voice calls and also served as an address book, calculator, and fax, providing the building blocks for the development of all subsequent smartphones 

1993 – The first search engine

Usability Engineering is published by Jakob Nielsen . In addition, Joe Dumas and Ginny Redish publish a practical guide to usability testing.

Publication of the SUMI questionnaire (Software Usability Measurement Inventory) by Jurek Kirakowski at the University of Cork.

1994 – First web browser and more usability theory

Randolph Bias and Deborah Mayhew published “The Reasons for Usability Costs”.

Jim Lewis reviews Virzi’s studies and comments in the article “Sample Sizes for Usability Studies: Additional Considerations”, finding general support for the claim that additional users are less likely to reveal new information, but the sample size depends on the occurrence of the problem. He also found that the severity and frequency of the problem are independent.

Jeff Rubin published “Usability Testing Guide: Planning, Designing, and Performing Effective Tests”

Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark launch Netscape Navigator, which works with the emerging World Wide Web and is the first commercial browser.

Sega launches Sega VR -1, a motion simulator that includes a helmet with three-dimensional polygon graphics and head movement tracking

1995 – Internet Explorer and PHP are born

Don Norman, known as the Godfather of Ease of Use, used the term “User Experience” to describe the wide variety of activities his team at Apple Computers had been involved in.

Altavista, developed by Digital Equipment Corporation, became one of the most popular search engines, thanks to its multilingual search capabilities and multimedia searches.

Microsoft began developing Internet Explorer for Windows, which was first released as part of Plus! for Windows 95. Because it was integrated into the Windows package, it gained a significant advantage and dethroned the Netscape browser, which required a separate installation

Rasmus Lerdorf makes the PHP language available to the public, marking the beginning of web application development.

Jeff Bezos introduces Amazon primarily as an e-commerce platform for books.

1996 – First webmail and proto-smartphone

John Brooke releases System Usage Scale (SUS) after 10 years in the industry.

WebEx is founded in California and continues to develop conferencing and screen-sharing software for moderate remote usability testing.

Palm Inc. launches Palm Pilot 1000 and 5000, representing the first generation of PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant) or handheld PCs.

Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launch Hotmail, one of the first Webmail services on the Internet, with free storage limited to 2 MB.

1997 – The first WYSIWYG creator in the history of UX design.

Netscape Communications Corporation released Netscape Composer, a Web page editor that provided a WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) environment and was distributed with the Netscape Navigator Web browser. Composer allowed users to edit HTML code, check spelling, publish Web pages, and supported major types of Web formatting.

Composer was the grandfather of WordPress’ Gutenberg, WIX, Squarespace, and other systems and services in common use today, enabling users to create pages without technical knowledge and leading to an explosion of websites, most of which were hosted on free hosting services. 

1998 – The busiest year in the history of UX?

Usability becomes the standard, integrated into ISO 9241 item 11.

“Web Navigation: User Experience Design” is published, one of the books in a new wave using the term “User Experience”.

Rolf Molich leads the first Comparative Usability Study (CUE).

Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google Inc., which became the most important search engine to date, far surpassing the previous web search engine Altavista. Originally named Backrub, it was later renamed Google, marking a significant moment in internet history.

Netscape launches the open source Mozilla project to compete with Internet Explorer, which was the most widely used browser at the time.

Netscape Navigator announces new Javascript technology that allows the content of a web page to change dynamically.

Flash consolidates as a tool for the development of interactive web applications, and a turning point was reached when the President Clinton scandal was broadcast as news online for the first time before television, initiating online journalism.

PayPal, originally launched as Confinity by founders Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, and Ken Howery, made its appearance on the e-commerce stage as a money transfer tool .

1999 – Accessibility and Wi-Fi

The first BlackBerry mobile device appears as a two-way pager. It featured a full QWERTY keyboard and could be used to send and receive text messages, emails, and pages.

The companies 3Com, Airones, Intersil, Lucent Technologies, Nokia and Symbol Technologies join forces to develop the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance or WECA, now called Wi-Fi Alliance.

WCAG 1.0 is published and becomes a W3C recommendation, setting standards for web accessibility .

2000 – Don’t make me think of Bluetooth

Steve Krug published his influential book Don’t Make me Think, bringing usability testing to the masses using the Think Aloud method pioneered by Ericsson and Simon two decades earlier. This book emphasized the importance of creating intuitive and user-friendly interfaces that minimize cognitive load for users.

Google Adwords was introduced, allowing e-commerce businesses to advertise to people using Google search. This marked the beginning of the pay-per-click (PPC) concept, which revolutionized online advertising.

The Ericsson T36 phone introduces Bluetooth technology to the mobile world, enabling consumers to wirelessly connect their phones to computers. This laid the foundation for future wireless connectivity and the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) .

2001 – Wikipedia and iPods

Steve Jobs launches the iPod, a line of portable digital audio players, along with the iTunes media player and multimedia content storage. The iPod’s sleek design and intuitive interface set a new standard for portable music players and paved the way for the smartphone revolution .

The Wikipedia project is launched, providing an online encyclopedia that enabled collaboration and editing among Internet users. Wikipedia has since become a massive source of knowledge, accessible to the public worldwide .

2002 – Remote Usability Testing Theory

The first publications on remote usability testing appear, including Tom Tullis et al. on “An empirical comparison between remote usability tests and the website laboratory“. This marked the beginning of using technology to conduct usability tests remotely, making the process more efficient and cost-effective .

2004 – The year of Firefox and Gmail

The standalone Netscape web browser was rebranded as Mozilla Firefox, offering an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Google launches its own mail service, Gmail, with larger storage, faster speed, and more flexible user interface, far surpassing the most popular mail services such as Hotmail and Yahoo! mail.

At a Web 2.0 conference, the concept of the Web as a platform is solidified, suggesting collaborative user participation. This shift in paradigm completely changed the way people interacted with the Internet .

2005 – Google Maps and Android

Google introduces Google Maps, one of the most widely used free features for users and businesses.

This year also marked Google’s acquisition of Android Inc., a move that would significantly impact the future of mobile technology.

2007 – iPhone revolutionizes the history of UX

Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at MacWorld 2007, calling it a “breakthrough product” that would be much easier to use than any other smartphone on the market. This event changed the mobile landscape forever and led Apple to its current position as one of the most successful companies in the world.

The iPhone replaced the traditional keyboard with a multi-touch interface that allowed users to operate the phone’s tools using their fingers, such as clicking links, zooming in/out on photos, and scrolling through albums using haptic technology. It was also the first device to offer a full, unrestricted version of the Internet, enabling users to browse the web as they would on a desktop computer .

The Open Handset Alliance is formed, a conglomerate of hardware, software and service provider manufacturers and developers. On the same day, the first version of the operating system was announced: Android 1.0 Apple Pie.

2008 – Introduction of WCAG 2.0

Tom Tullis and Bill Albert publish Measuring the User Experience, the first book on usability measurement, which has become increasingly qualitative over the past decade.

Accessibility guidelines WCAG 2.0 is published as a W3C recommendation. It consists of twelve non-verifiable guidelines organized under four principles (websites must be perceptible, usable, understandable, and robust). Each guideline has verifiable success criteria.

2009 – First cryptocurrency

This year saw the emergence of a new crazy concept: cryptocurrency. It started with the creation of Bitcoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency.

2010 – First Android phone and Instagram

ISO 9241-210: 2010 is published, providing requirements and recommendations for human-centered design principles and activities throughout the life cycle of interactive computer-based systems.

Google unveils its first mobile phone, the Nexus One, which runs on Android, followed by the Nexus S made by Samsung.

Instagram was also born in 2010, transforming the way people experience and share their lives with other users through photography .

2011 – Uber goes out

While Uber was founded in 2009, the app and ride-hailing service first launched in 2011 in San Francisco, considered its first public appearance. Uber would go on to change the history of user experience by creating systems that were copied by many other industries, from transportation to food delivery.

Note: you can check Uber Design Guidelines on our site.

2012 – UXPA is born

The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) changed its name to the User Experience Professionals Association (UxPA).

Jeff Sauro and James R. Lewis publish the first book on statistical analysis of usability data (now in its second edition): Quantifying User Experience: Practical Statistics for User Research

Palmer Luckey presents the first prototype of the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift as a Kickstarter project. The prototype was known as Oculus Rift Development Kit 1 (simplified as DK1).

2013 – Chromecast is created

Google’s Chromecast made wireless streaming from mobile devices to TV as easy as a few clicks, at an affordable price. This product started the era of smart TV, now ubiquitous in most homes.

The 4G protocol, introduced in 2009, also began spreading around the world in 2013.

2014 – Today’s most important OS is created, but…

In 2014 and after the disaster of Windows 8 (and a ghost Windows 9 that never saw the light of day), Microsoft desperately needed new life for its flagship product. Windows 10 proved to be the solution they needed. However, users were so disappointed with everything Windows that it took 5 years (until January 2019 to be exact) to topple Windows 7 and become the world’s most popular OS. And to do so, Microsoft had to announce they would discontinue support for Windows 7, probably one of thebest Windows versions ever.

2015 – AlphaGO and Deep Learning: the dawn of Big Data

In 2014, Google bought DeepMind, an AI company, to go deep into Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. AlphaGo demonstrated its strength in 2015 by defeating Lee Sedol, the top ranked Go player in the world. It later became the top-ranked chess player in the world.

DeepMind AI is the engine that powers most of the most important data on the web, from consumer behavior to user research, from maps to IoT. It’s also what drove the creation of Quantum UX, the first chapters of which were created in the same year.

2018 – XBox meets accessibility

Microsoft’s Xbox took a significant step towards accessibility in 2018 with the Xbox Adaptive Controller. This customizable interface is designed for gamers with disabilities and features two large buttons that can be reprogrammed to function as any of the standard Xbox controller buttons, showcasing the application of Quantum UX principles to physical design.

2019 – Welcome Genomics and Precision Medicine.

Genomics and Precision Medicine is a high-tech branch of medicine that Health UX will dive deep into in the near future. In 2019, such technology showed promising results in treating blood disorders like sickle cell anemia and other genetic diseases like muscular dystrophy. According to some, CRISPR technology could correct up to 89% of disease-causing genetic variations in the future.

South Korea was the first country to launch 5G. Just hours later, Verizon launched its 5G services in the United States, disputing South Korea claims to be the first country in the world with a 5G network.

2020 – Covid-19 pandemic urges quick solutions

The year 2020 began with the worst health crisis in modern human history: the Covid-19 pandemic.

The need for isolation for health reasons and access to goods caused many businesses to go bankrupt. However, e-commerce experienced its greatest growth ever, and home office work became the new standard, changing the way economic power shifts at low and middle socioeconomic levels.

Conclusion: A story that will never end

This is a very brief snippet of the history of user experience design. You will probably think of many things we have left out. Some of it by accident, some of it because we needed to make the article readable.

Either way, as long as anyone is just thinking about designing a product or service, user experience knowledge will feed that creation and be fed back with the new data.

We are in a new world. A world waiting for a miraculous cure. A world waiting to get its usual life back. AI, Big Data and Machine Learning will be the superstars of this renaissance. And that’s the point we’re all looking at.

Academic Sources

1. Shneiderman, B. (1987). Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction. Addison-Wesley.
2. Norman, D. A. (1988). The Psychology of Everyday Things. Basic Books.
3. Brooke, J. (1986). “SUS: A quick and dirty usability scale.” Usability Evaluation in Industry.
4. Dumas, J. S., & Redish, J. C. (1999). A Practical Guide to Usability Testing. Greenwood Publishing Group.
5. Lewis, J. R. (1995). “IBM’s Advanced Usability Testing: The System Usability Scale.” International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 7(1), 57-78.
6. Nielsen, J., & Molich, R. (1990). Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 249-256. Google Scholar
7. Nielsen, J. (1994). Usability Engineering. Morgan Kaufmann.
8. Shackel, B. (1991). Human factors and usability. In Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 21-29). Wikipedia
9. Kirakowski, J. (1996). SUMI: Software Usability Measurement Inventory. University College Cork.
10. Krug, S. (2000). Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. New Riders.
11. Tullis, T., & Albert, B. (2008). Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics. Morgan Kaufmann.
12. Sauro, J., & Lewis, J. R. (2016). Quantifying the User Experience: Practical Statistics for User Research. Morgan Kaufmann.
13. Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1980). Verbal reports as data. Psychological Review, 87(3), 215-251.
14. ISO 9241-210:2010. (2010). Ergonomics of human-system interaction – Part 210: Human-centred design for interactive systems. International Organization for Standardization.