The Great History of User Experience - Part 2

Part two of the story: how UX went from a scientific niche to the discipline behind every screen, told through the milestones from 1985 to 2020.

Quick answer

In the digital age, UX matured alongside computing. Key milestones: the Mac and Windows GUIs (1985), the System Usability Scale (1986), Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things (1988), the World Wide Web (1990-91), Norman coining ‘user experience’ at Apple (1995), Nielsen’s heuristics, the iPhone (2007), WCAG 2.0 (2008), ISO 9241-210 (2010), and the rise of big data, deep learning and AI (2015 onward). This is part two; part one covers the century before.

Key takeaways

As computers went mainstream, UX shifted from art to measured science.
The System Usability Scale (1986) and Nielsen's heuristics (1990) are still core tools.
Don Norman coined 'user experience' at Apple in 1995.
The iPhone (2007) and WCAG (1999, 2008) reshaped interaction and accessibility.
Big data, deep learning and AI (2015 onward) set the stage for Quantum UX and today's generative era.

UX in the digital age: a timeline

1985

The GUI era begins

Mac OS ships with mouse, windows, icons and menus; Windows arrives. Gould and Lewis publish 'Designing for Usability', championing empirical, iterative design.

1986

Usability gets measured

John Brooke creates the System Usability Scale (SUS), still one of the most used usability questionnaires.

1987

Theory and VR

Shneiderman's Designing the User Interface; Peter Rowe's 'Design Thinking'; QUIS (a Semantic Differential rival to SUS). Perl is invented.

1988

Usability becomes a profession

'Usability Engineering' formalizes goal setting, prototyping and iteration. Norman publishes The Psychology (later Design) of Everyday Things.

1990-91

The web is born

Tim Berners-Lee builds HTTP, HTML, the first browser and server. Nielsen and Molich publish heuristic evaluation. Shackel ties usability to efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction (ISO 9241-11).

1992-94

Mobile and browsers

IBM Simon, the first smartphone. Netscape Navigator, the first commercial browser. Nielsen's Usability Engineering book.

1995

'User Experience' is named

Don Norman coins the term 'user experience' at Apple. PHP, Internet Explorer and Amazon appear.

1998

Usability becomes standard

Usability enters ISO 9241-11. Google is founded. Netscape open-sources Mozilla; JavaScript enables dynamic pages.

1999-2000

Accessibility and 'Don't Make Me Think'

WCAG 1.0 becomes a W3C recommendation. Steve Krug popularizes usability testing; Wi-Fi and Bluetooth arrive.

2007

The iPhone

Multi-touch replaces the keyboard and brings the full web to a phone, redefining interaction. Android is announced.

2008

WCAG 2.0

Accessibility guidelines organized under four principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, robust. First book on measuring UX.

2010

ISO 9241-210

The formal human-centered design standard for interactive systems. Instagram launches.

2015

AI and big data

AlphaGo and deep learning signal the big-data era. DeepMind's work also seeds Quantum UX, drafted the same year.

2018-2020

Accessibility, genomics, pandemic

Xbox Adaptive Controller (accessible physical design). Precision medicine and Health UX emerge. Covid-19 accelerates e-commerce and remote work.

This is only a snippet; plenty is left out to keep it readable. The thread never ends: as long as someone is designing a product or service, UX knowledge feeds that creation and is fed back by new data. AI, big data and machine learning are the superstars of this next chapter.

Who coined the term 'user experience'?

Don Norman, at Apple in 1995, to describe the wide range of activities his team worked on beyond the interface.

When was the System Usability Scale created?

In 1986, by John Brooke, as a quick, reliable way to measure perceived usability. It is still widely used.

How did the iPhone change UX?

In 2007 it replaced physical keyboards with multi-touch and brought the full web to a phone, setting a new standard for mobile interaction.

What is WCAG and when did it start?

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. WCAG 1.0 became a W3C recommendation in 1999; WCAG 2.0 followed in 2008 with its four principles.

How did AI enter UX history?

Around 2015, deep learning (AlphaGo, DeepMind) opened the big-data era, which seeded frameworks like Quantum UX and today’s generative AI.

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The Great History of User Experience – Part 2

Key takeaways

UX in the digital age: a timeline

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