UX – The Origin of the Term Itself

ux

User Experience design, or UX— a common term these days in the industry of app/web design. The term was coined by Don Norman, an academic & author of key UX design books such as “The Design of Every Day Things”. He came up with the term while serving as a VP at Apple. He comments:

“I invented the term because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow. I wanted to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with the system including industrial design, graphics, the interface, the physical interaction, and the manual. Since then the term has spread widely, so much so that it is starting to lose it’s meaning… user experience, human centered design, usability; all those things, even affordances. They just sort of entered the vocabulary and no longer have any special meaning. People use them often without having any idea why, what the word means, its origin, history, or what it’s about.”

In the digital age where we have tons of information to wade through, filter, and group, it´s ironic that even the term itself, UX, becoming complex and losing its meaning. User experience design, for me is simple: a way to simplify products to be easy to use and beneficial to users. Best done by focusing on the Users’ tendencies & needs.

Leave a Reply