Title: Understanding Our Interaction Design History
Context: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And yes that includes you too UX designers.
Synopsis: In the grand scheme of things (digital) user experience design is a mere child when compared to its more established siblings such as “graphic”, “product” and “information”. This does not mean however, that no history exists for those of us in the field. On the contrary, what we lack in temporal age we more than make up for with the rapidity with which our discipline evolves. We are the fruit flies of design genetics; in a state of constant evolution, moving at a pace that drives adaptation and innovation as a fact of life in our profession. This should not however be taken as an excuse to ignore the historical record of human/computer interaction design. On the contrary, it is exactly because we move so fast that we absolutely must pay special attention to the places we have already been as we cannot afford to make mistakes more than once.
Best Bit: “It’s easy to think of interaction design as just a wireframe or a layout, but it really impacts our culture at a deep level–just as much as the actual digital technology, if not more.”
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