1. If you work in #UX do you know it's history?

Your profession didn't start with mobile apps nor with the rise of the web - the stories of who paved the way will inspire you. I wrote How Design Makes The World to help. #thread https://bookshop.org/books/how-design-makes-the-world/9780983873181?aid=6284&listref=scott-berkun-s-book-list

2. The term user experience was coined in the 1990s, but people have been doing this work informally for ages.

Think of shelters, clothes, tools, doors, all created by people thinking about how to use different skills to create good experiences for others. The craft is ancient!

3. UX unifies many older skills. Even Norman's classic book was originally titled The *Psychology* of Everyday Things as it's based on cog psych knowledge.

But think! Under different names even the Greeks (architecture/ergonomics) and Chinese (Feng Shui) had similar goals.

4. Cars/airplanes were the 1st modern products ($$) where the many skills we call UX design today were formally funded.

Through "usability" studies, researchers learned to design for memory, perception and more, evolving into "human factors". Modern product UX is rooted here.

5. Paul Fitts (of Fitts' Law) discovered "pilot error" was often just bad design (a NEW IDEA in 1947).

Alphonse Chapanis worked on cockpits, but also the layout of the now ubiquitous phone keypad in the 1950s. As computers became personal their work was instrumental (ha ha).

6. Even earlier (1920s) Lillian Moller Gilbreth pioneered the crossover of psychology and industry, same goals different domain: inventing ways to study behavior and design better.

She & husband improved/humanized Taylor's draconian methods - more practical/effective. Sadly...

7. Due to bias against women she shifted to home design.

Gilbreth invented: "kitchen triangle", the foot pedal trash can and many more. She pioneered user research methods, practiced inclusive design, wrote/spoke prolifically, advised 5 presidents + single parent to 11 kids!

8. But the true rise of product design began in 1931: Sloan's strategy of planned obsolescence at GM required new car models yearly.

Design jobs went 3X during great depression (to 9500).

Marketing product "features" with fun names was born: Apple learned much here!

9. Consumerism thrived after WWII, fueled by designers like Henry Dreyfuss. Most notable: his synthesis of user research, design and engineering (UX long before the term). Cross-discipline FTW.

His strategic use of ethnography and user research was his competitive advantage.

10. Every industry discovers design on its own time. It was tech's turn in the 1980s. Cross-discipline was key.

David Canfield Smith, inventor of desktop metaphor for Xerox Star, was a mentee of Alan Kay who gave him a stack of ART BOOKS, inspiring him to think in metaphors.

11. Artist/designer @SusanKare led the revolutionary visual language, fonts, icons, for the Macintosh's escape from the command line.

She was the sole designer on the Mac team and, along w/ the Xerox Star project, built the UI foundations we take for granted today.

12. New inventions demand the rejection of old assumptions, but critical ones can get left behind (like research based design).

The web from 1994 onward scrambled to rediscover the old knowledge.

And in this rebuilding, the rise of "UX" as the name for the profession began.

13. All this means that if you:

- think about user tasks
- care about aesthetics
- work with a method or process
- make a prototype
- study user data

there's a great history of useful lessons and inspiring stories.

Check out the book. Thx. http://designmtw.com 

14. Reference note:

History is fractal and there are countless worthy stories I could have included but didn't - it's a twitter thread - Yay design constraints!

Many of these stories are in the book and they are properly told, attributed and referenced there.